


i want you to be happier

by Hymn



Series: Hymn's Fic: The Magicians Collection [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (due to villain), Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Depression, Entirely Self-Indulgent, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, POV Multiple, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, References to Depression, References to Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, adding those tags to be safe, season 4 canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2020-09-27 10:04:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20405926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: Alice leaned back into the chair, arms crossed, expression mulishly guilty.Now this felt familiar, too -- how many times had someone come to him, needing help to fix the world? Penny tried not to laugh, managed to keep it down to a vaguely mocking smile. But inside he felt like Alice’s voice: rough, jagged, a scream building momentum, eager to slip free. “And you need my help to handle it?” he asked. “Let me guess -- Coldwater’s at the heart of it somehow.”Alice’s eyes gleamed behind her glasses. “He will be, so long as we don’t fuck everything up along the way.”Screw being dead, that'ssolast season.





	1. Prologue

  
  
  


# i want you to be happier

\------------------------------------------------------------

****

####  **PROLOGUE**

The Library, Underworld Branch  
Department: Secrets Taken To The Grave  
\------------------------------------------------------------

Marjorie had baked cookies. 

Penny knew because a note had been left on his desk before his and Quentin’s first official, scheduled session: _CHOCOLATE CHIP, XOXO_

It was sort of Marjorie’s thing, baking far too many cookies ‘by accident’ and then bringing them to the break room to be devoured, so he knew it was from her. Plus, Penny recognized the handwriting, as well as the too-sweet perfume that faintly stained the fluorescent pink post-it. He’d stowed it in his desk drawer just before the weird, half-knock on his door sounded, like Quentin had started to rap his knuckles in some sort of jaunty, dorky dad-rhythm before realizing exactly how stupid that was and faltering. 

Even in the Hereafter Quentin Coldwater was a socially awkward nerd. Nice to know that some things never changed. Penny smiled, thinking back to that moment as he made his way to the elevator, heading back upstairs to his office, entirely alone.

It was harder to smile than it should have been.

If he tried, Penny still remembered the disgusted fear he’d felt, back when he’d first started scouting out how to get his hands on a metrocard; long before his path had brought him to where he was now, back when he’d been so eager to leave behind the Library and death, to return to the land of the living. All those sobbing, freshly dead souls leaving office doors with the dull brass letters affixed across: Secrets Taken To The Grave. 

Penny had thought the offices must house monsters, unfeeling, uncaring.

But if that were true, Penny didn’t think his chest would feel quite as raw as it was currently. Surely monsters didn’t suffer pain like this, sore and cantankerous, like an old wound acting up on a rainy day. He grit his teeth against it, annoyed and troubled that he apparently hadn’t realized exactly how hard it would be to see Quentin here, to know what that _meant_.

At the elevator, he jammed his finger against the button harder than he needed. Jesus. Sending Coldwater back to the Meadows’ Halfway House hadn’t been easy, even if Penny _had_ been exhausted by the end of their session. Not when Quentin had been so good at the kicked puppy thing when he’d been alive. Now? When he was dead and reeling, lost and afraid? 

Those eyes were _brutal_. 

“They have dormitories there,” Penny had explained, desperate to wipe that stupid look off Coldwater’s face. “Nice ones, even. I’ve been to see them. You’ll be just fine, I promise.”

“Just like Brakebills,” Quentin had joked. “Only -- really, really not.”

“_Wow_. I still don’t understand how one man can be so awkward --” shit, Penny hadn’t meant to say that, but it’d come out instinctive, rattling on out of him like a ghost. Quentin had cracked half a smile, though, shrugging in that ‘aw shucks’ way he had at times, and just said, “See you. I guess.”

“Yeah,” was all Penny had managed to come up with. “See you.”

Penny hated leaving him alone this time as much as he had after their preliminary meeting. Which was bullshit, really. Penny was still fairly new at this job, but he was _good_ at it. Believed in it. He’d been where his charges were all too recently, knew what it felt like to grapple with mortality’s end, but not the end of consciousness, the _desire_ to keep living. And he was kinder than some of his colleagues, who’d been at this work for centuries: it wasn’t like Penny had been _required_ to take Quentin down to the Meadows’ portal. Penny could have simply sent him out of his office to find it on his own until their next scheduled session, but no, Penny was too much a soft touch, and what with it being _Quentin_, just -- _seriously_, those stupid, sad-puppy eyes.

So, there shouldn’t have been any reason for Penny to feel like a monster, no matter how his chest currently ached.

And yet...

_It’s good work, something to be proud of,_ he reminded himself firmly as he stepped into the elevator, the doors shutting him in. _When has that sorry sack of sad ever known peace or happiness that lasts? He’s going to get it now, and he did a good thing getting there. He -- He uh --_

Quentin was really dead.

Like… really, _really_ dead, no going back again. Ever.

Huh.

Penny thought about the fluorescent pink post-it that had been on his desk that morning. Knew in a distant, absolute way that he should go to the break room, get a plate of Marjorie’s cookies, a glass of milk to go with them, maybe, and a seat with the others to chat idly about the day, their cases, the interoffice relationship gossip. Hector was having an epistolary affair with a living Librarian in the Rome Branch, and HR was sniffing about after it. Very exciting, and also -- _also_ \--

“Stupid,” Penny muttered, waiting anxiously for the elevator doors to open onto his office floor rather than the one below with Marjorie and her cookies. His hand had felt shaky jabbing in the button for the floor, and his reflection looked strange and twisted in the shining, mirror-bright surfaces of the elevator. “Idiotic, boring little --”

The doors finally started open with a musical ding.

“Mr Adiyodi!” gasped Jerome from right outside them. 

_Jesus_. 

Jerome was Penny’s secretary, as well as the secretary to three other caseworkers on Penny’s floor. He was usually pretty level-headed, extremely competent, and all around a good guy to hang about with -- he was also standing _far_ too close, and rapidly coming closer. 

“Whoa,” said Penny, rocking backward on his heels.

When the elevator doors tried to close Jerome was in the way. They gave a mournful ding and opened again, then tried shutting once more. But Jerome remained unmoved, save for the way one hand was fluttering in Penny’s direction, as if tempted to seize Penny by his jacket in a fit of -- whatever this was. He was saying frantically, “I’ve been looking all over for you, Mr Adiyodi! There -- you have uh -- people! In your office! People from uh --” he took a deep breath, looking shaken, and added in a loud stage-whisper: “-- _topside_.”

“Ah…”

For what would have been a heart stopping moment if Penny’s heart did, in fact, still beat, he thought it might be Kady. 

He felt it rush through him in a way that was exciting and nauseating simultaneously, like being alive and hungry and terrified all at once, and desperately, fiercely glad of it -- and then he realized that was ridiculous. He’d said his goodbyes, and while he’d never stop loving her, _missing_ her, he had moved on. He’d _had_ to. It was just -- he was feeling off kilter from dealing with Quentin, from being reminded of all those Penny had already left behind. And -- and Quentin was _really and actually dead_, which was apparently enough to fuck Penny up a bit.

Martha, his direct supervisor, _had_ been reluctant to give him Quentin’s case. For good reason, it seemed.

He had to get control over himself. 

“Jerome, buddy,” Penny said with a wide smile and a firm press of his hand to Jerome’s shoulder, pushing him gently out of the way of the elevator doors. Penny followed through, allowing them to shut with a final, strident _ding_. “It’s all good. Do you know which department?” Maybe it was HR looking for more gritty, salacious details about Hector. 

Jerome flailed.

Down the hall, the door to Penny’s office opened with an ominous click before Jerome could reclaim coherency. As if somehow the person inside had known Penny was already there, asking these questions. This being the Library, and the _Underworld_ on top of that, Penny wouldn’t have put it past them.

Still, it was a bit of a surprise to see Zelda step out, looking nervous. 

“Mr Adiyodi,” she said with pleasant professionalism, as if she wasn’t the direct reason Penny was even here, dead, and -- _stop that_, he told himself. _You’re acting like one of the freshly deceased you send off. Stop regretting things. Let it go!_

“Hello,” Penny said, which was better than nothing. He couldn’t seem to release Jerome’s shoulder, despite his secretary trying subtly to pull away.

Zelda adjusted her cat’s eye glasses, taking a moment to clear her throat. “We do so apologize for the surprise, Mr Adiyodi. We would have phoned ahead, but it’s just -- _well_, what with the recent uproar, the Library is in, hm, shall we say… a bit of a transition? And there are some changes that I believe it best to inform you of, _personally_, and the sooner the better.”

“Of course,” Penny managed, squeezing Jerome’s shoulder for reassurance. “Shall we --”

“Penny?”

Another one of those heart-stopping moments; Penny was feeling a little nostalgic for his old bodily functions at this point. While Zelda had been a surprise, seeing Alice Quinn follow her into the hall, dressed as gun-metal gray as the rest of them, was a _shock_. 

Damn, but Penny really wished he’d had a chance to read further in all their books.

“...You’ve _got_ to be fucking me,” was what Penny said, with uncharacteristic liveliness. Jerome jolted next to him, possibly horrified. Penny’s hand tightened on his shoulder, far past the point of assurance. “I’m so totally blaming this on Coldwater. He always did make a mess of the simplest things.”

At that, Alice gave a tremulous, heart-broken smile. “I think it was his super power,” she agreed.

“So, what’s all this?” Penny asked while Jerome squeaked under the pressure of his fingers. He felt surprisingly bitter. Something he’d almost -- _almost_ \-- forgotten the taste of. Perhaps foolishly, he had thought speaking to the alternate version of himself, essentially sealing Quentin’s death, was the test to see if Penny could keep all his newly won acceptance whole, unbroken. He’d been wrong, apparently; _this_ was. He had a feeling he was failing.

Strange, that it didn’t _feel_ like a failure.

Penny said, aiming for lazy mockery, “Have you come to see your one true love? It doesn’t really work if one of you is dead.” Except for Hector, maybe. He seemed to be making a decent go of it, if HR’s panic was anything to go by.

“No,” said Alice, shaking her head. “N-no, not -- something’s happened, Penny. Or, no -- _will_ happen. Zelda --”

“We really should take this into your office, Mr Adiyodi,” said Zelda herself, hands in their customary, seemingly harmless position. She gave a significant glance at Jerome and Penny released him, smoothed out the wrinkle of his suit.

“Sorry about that.”

“No problem, sir!” Jerome’s shoes squeaked as he fled. Over his shoulder he called, “I’ll clear your schedule!”

Penny watched him go for a moment, thinking about cookies, warm like they’d just come out of the oven. In the Underworld, food didn’t even _start_ to go bad unless you wanted it to. He _should_ have gone to the break room, one floor down. He should have listened to Martha. His chest ached, no longer an old wound, but something that still seeped poison.

Zelda smiled. “Shall we?”

With a sigh, he walked down the hall and followed the two women back into his office, shutting the door behind him. And to think, Penny had been getting so good at this Underworld Librarian thing, totally zen without even trying that hard for it.

Looked like _that_ was firmly out the window.

He found himself smiling, easier than it had been when headed toward the elevator. Failure didn’t seem so bad, even if the Library-trained part of himself knew he’d suffer for it later. He asked, not bothering to draw this out: “This _is_ about Coldwater, isn’t it?”

“You had your first session today, yes? After yesterday’s preliminary meeting?” Zelda asked, standing on the far side. Alice took an awkward seat, smoothing her skirt beneath her. Penny went around and took his chair, but the familiar position of authority didn’t make him feel any more in control of himself.

He said, “Yeah. He uh -- needs some time to work through everything. Deluxe Package. Which I mean -- no surprise there, right?”

Alice stared at her knees, quiet for a moment. Penny watched her, unable to resist the temptation, and he saw the exact moment she broke: bursting into words, into excitement, into a nervous wreck. Penny had to sit back in his chair, hands tight on his thighs while he was struck hard once more with nostalgia. Poor, perfect Alice Quinn, always trying to bottle everything up until she exploded with it.

She grit out, “Look, Penny -- I need your help. We all do, it -- I’ve fixed our books, mine and Quentin’s, Julia and Margo’s and -- and Eliot’s and Penny-23‘s. All of ours. And it -- but that’s not even --” her voice sounded ragged, raw, like she was smothering a scream, “-- I mean, there are -- oh, how do I explain --!”

Gently, Zelda laid a hand atop Alice’s shoulder.

“There are some things we need to tell you, Penny,” Zelda explained, no longer hiding behind professionalism. “Alice here will be...taking over for me, running the Library as soon as she’s trained. But already we -- we have something of a problem on our hands. One which both Alice and myself are at fault for, I’m afraid.”

Alice leaned back into the chair, arms crossed, expression mulishly guilty. 

Now _this_ felt familiar, too -- how many times had someone come to him, needing help to fix the world? Penny tried not to laugh, managed to keep it down to a vaguely mocking smile. But inside he felt like Alice’s voice: rough, jagged, a scream building momentum, eager to slip free. “And you need my help to handle it?” he asked. “Let me guess -- Coldwater’s at the heart of it somehow.”

Alice’s eyes gleamed behind her glasses. “He will be, so long as we don’t fuck everything up along the way.”

It was hard to feel like a monster when instead he was feeling more like himself than he had in what seemed like ages. Martha was going to demote him. Penny was going to spend the next century seated on a couch rather than behind his desk, and he did not give two flying fucks whether it was wrong or right, whether he’d regret this. There were plenty of things he regretted, after all, and he’d learned to -- well, not _live_ with them, obviously. What was one more? 

“All right,” Penny replied, smile growing, showing teeth. “You’ve got me interested. I’ll bite -- what do we need to do?”


	2. Chapter One

****

#### CHAPTER ONE

****

New York City, Earth  
Marina’s Apartment  
\------------------------------------------------------------

Penny hadn’t known Q as well as the others -- or as well as the Penny from timeline 40 had. But he’d known him well enough to be sorry that he was gone, and he loved Julia enough to be pained by her pain. He hated, a little, the Penny he’d met in that room, that between place, who had told him to do what Quentin asked, to take Alice and run. Because if he hadn’t, maybe Quentin wouldn’t have been so willing to risk the fallout, maybe --

Yeah, maybe they’d all be dead with a brand new god on the warpath.

And he’d thought _his_ timeline had been fucked up. Jesus. 

Carefully, Penny eased the door to Julia’s room open, checking in. He wouldn’t call it suicide watch, but it was something close. She’d lost a lot, and quickly. Even with her magic back, there was too _much_ grief to process. Coming back to the city to help Kady and the others had seemed the best choice, but Penny didn’t want to risk finding out that choosing human had been the worst mistake of his life.

She was asleep under the covers, no sign of nightmares.

Penny allowed himself a slow sigh of relief, watching the gentle expansion and release of her ribs beneath the blanket. She'd been sleeping a lot lately, at least when she wasn't performing minor spell after minor spell, as if punishing herself for losing the trick of it in the first place, shut away from the rest of them more often than not. Despite that, there wasn’t much in the room to denote it as hers, except -- she’d kept the deck of cards from Quentin’s funeral. “Something to remember him by,” she’d said, almost defensively, when Penny had first seen it sitting on her bedside table. “I don’t want to forget.”

_I don’t want to forget the pain that gave magic back to me._

Penny leaned against the door frame to watch her, just for a moment, worried still. It was like he didn’t know how to _stop_, not anymore. He would have liked to have crawled into the bed next to her. Not for -- not for anything, really, except for sleep, for comfort. He was tired. They were _all_ tired. He wanted to rest, to actually have a moment to feel happy or content, rather than sorry and scared and desperate. It was a little unfair that he’d made it all the way out of his shitshow timeline to this one, and he _still_ couldn’t be satisfied.

But he dared to think that, just maybe, he was getting closer to something like happiness.

Well, he could hope at least, right?

From down in the living room, Margo hollered out, “Chop, chop, 23! I’ve got a kingdom to reclaim, and a distinct lack of patience to do it with! So stop creeping on your not-a-girlfriend and let’s get a-traveling!”

Sighing, Penny closed Julia’s door as gently as he could, trying not to make noise enough to wake her. He would have liked to ignore Margo entirely, but if he did then she’d just come up, bitching the whole way, and cause a racket and a scene until she got what she wanted, Julia’s rest be damned. It’d be nice when Margo and Eliot were gone -- Margo because she was too strident, and Eliot because he was too...sad. Penny had a lot on his plate without adding their soap opera lives to it more than he had to. 

Also, he was _not_ a fucking Lyft service, all right? 

“I don’t _have_ to do --” he started to say, just to prove this point, as he came down the stairs, but as soon as the living room and its occupants came into view his complaint morphed into a startled pause, followed by, “-- the fuck?”

Okay. Okay, so -- that was weird.

The living room below him was echoingly empty, nothing in it save Marina’s taste in furniture and decor. The silence seemed loud now that Margo wasn’t there to shout into it. Halfway down the stairs still, Penny tried to decide if this bore investigation, or if he should just turn tail and go back to Julia.

Before he could decide, the front door slammed open, Kady swaggering in. She gave the apartment a cursory glance, the kind of look someone battle-hardened and used to fighting for safety gave instinctively, seeking out danger and quickly formulating escape routes. Her gaze eventually settled on Penny, _still_ on the stairs, probably gaping with a stupid expression on his face.

“What?” Kady said, all defensive aggression.

And, okay. Maybe telling _Kady_ that Penny was pretty certain that, uh -- that Penny-fucking-40 had just shown up in her stolen apartment, somehow, looking positively lively for someone supposedly dead and in willing cahoots with the Library, and then proceeded to travel off with Eliot and Margo to parts unknown wasn’t, exactly, the best idea.

Penny cleared his throat. “Uh, nothing. Just a long day.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kady said, kicking the door closed behind her and going for the fridge. “You took Margo and Eliot back to Fillory, right?”

“...Right.”

Technically, it wasn’t even a lie.

It just hadn’t been _this_ Penny, him, the one that was standing there with her, here and now. Kady said, voice muffled while she scrounged up something to make a sandwich with: “Cool. Now that’s over, you and Julia ready to help me organize a Hedge Witch revolution?”

“Dude, the Library’s done fucking with them,” Penny said, happily setting aside the puzzle of timeline 40 getting his travel on with Margo and Eliot. He came down the stairs and settled at the counter. “What do they need --”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Kady interrupted, shutting the fridge and laying out her spoils between them. She spoke calmly, but with a crystal clarity and force of will that was sharp as any battle spell, and twice as powerful. “Living as a Hedge, battling for any scrap. It wasn’t the _Library_ that did that. It was magicians, Brakebills, people who believe in their own superiority and look down on those with less breeding, less raw power, less good fortune. It’s fucking class warfare and I’m tired of seeing it destroy people. I’m tired of being part of the machine that spits them out and shits all over them and leaves them in the dust to die.”

“...Damn,” said Penny, with a low whistle.

Kady smirked at him. 

“You sound terrifyingly righteous.” 

“Thanks. I’ve been working on my rhetoric,” Kady said, digging out a knife. “Peter’s coming over soon. You in or not?”

Penny considered it, but not for long. After all, this seemed just the kind of thing Julia could get behind. A project to help get her back on steady ground. She’d wanted to be a goddess to help people, but she didn’t need to be divine to do that. And it wasn’t like they were going to have to go up against any more homicidal, psychopathic gods. Or at least, he really hoped not. As far as quests went, overhauling the system didn’t seem so bad.

“Yeah,” said Penny. “Why not? Sign us up for the revolution.”

Kady pointed the knife at him, pleased. “Good. I’ll tell you more as soon as I’ve eaten this. God, I’m so fucking hungry.”

Snorting, Penny snagged a slice of cheese. He didn’t know what had happened to Margo and Eliot, but he thought it was a pretty safe bet to say that it wasn’t anything _bad_. Or at least nothing worse than the usual. The other Penny had timed his abduction deliberately, waiting until Penny had just come into sight. Timeline 40 had looked up, right at him in that split second, with a cocky-ass grin Penny _almost_ recognized as his own, as if trying to be certain that Penny saw. 

_I got this_, had also ricocheted through his head, past his mental barriers in a way only another version of himself would have managed. Definitely the Penny that had told him to take Alice and run, the one who had kept them from going down with Quentin -- or caused Quentin’s death, who knew? But Penny figured he could trust himself. Probably.

Eh, fuck it. It was just Margo and Eliot, they could manage.

And besides, the dead asshole had apparently stolen Penny’s favorite shirt and most comfortable pair of jeans for this little trick, which Penny had been _looking for_ just that morning. Timeline 40 deserved whatever shit he got into. _This_ Penny had more important concerns.

“I’ll go wake up Julia,” he told Kady.

“Awesome,” she garbled out around a mouthful of ham, swiss, and way, way too much mustard  
  


\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Several Days Travel From Whitespire  
\------------------------------------------------------------

Margo screamed -- not a faint, frightened shrieking, but with all the rage her powerful, sexy body could hold. She’d had a lot of practice recently doing that kind of screaming and it was cathartic to say the least. No wonder so many men did it in action movies, raging against the world and shit circumstances.

“The _lungs_ on you, Bambi,” Eliot murmured, blinking rapidly.

The family they’d stopped was also blinking, halted a few paces down the road and looking back at them over their shoulders, far more appalled and confused than her dear Eliot. But then, Eliot might not have had the energy for proper horror at the moment. Or maybe he had his priorities in a different order.

But just --

“Fucking _balls_,” she panted, nails cutting into her palms. Because like fuck had she waded through _this much shit_ only to wind up in a Fillory three hundred years removed from her own timeline. How the fuck had this happened?

“How the _fuck_ did that happen?” she asked, jerking her clenched fist out toward Whitespire, which had far, far too many spires going on at the moment.

The family looked concerned for her mental health.

“Don’t take it out on the natives, darling,” Eliot murmured. “Hello, yes, my good pumpkin farmers! That is a _lovely_ harvest, really. But just a moment more of your time, if you would? We are, hm. Travelers? From a far off land, entirely foreign and strange to you --” for a moment, Eliot looked like he was having a bit of fun; sadly, Margo knew it wouldn’t last “-- please, accept everything we say, no matter _how_ outlandish, and answer truly in kind.”

“You’re certainly strange,” said one of the children. 

Margo briefly contemplated seeing if she could smash a pumpkin over his head. She felt certain she could find the rage-strength for it. Instead, she took a deep breath and attempted the smile she’d donned whenever Josh had been coaching her through diplomacy.

Ah, hell.

Josh.

And there went her smile.

“Listen to me, you nasty little shit,” she snarled, taking a menacing step forward and pushing up her sleeves, preparing to smash some pumpkins. “If you don’t want to be spitting out pumpkin seeds for a _week_, then you’d better tell me where the _fuck_ I can find Josh and Fen, and also who the hell this pompous shitstain Dark King _thinks_ they are --”

“Your wrists,” gasped the -- fuck, Margo was getting tired of calling him pumpkin farmer, and she sure as _shit_ was not calling him Dad, even in her head. Way too many issues already there, thank you. Todd, he could be Todd. He certainly irritated her as much as a Todd.

Margo glanced at her wrists. “Yeah?” she said, instinctively wary. The scars of her branding -- her exile from Fillory -- were still a little sore, though not as badly as her pride when she thought of the whole ordeal that had led to them. Fucking coups and fucking desert people who hated Fillorians.

She asked, “What about them, huh?”

Eliot drew closer to her side, gripping the handle of his cane in a way that turned it into a weapon rather than an aid. She felt a blossom of fondness and love and sadness spread through her chest -- her dear, sweet, broken Eliot, ready to fight beside her no matter what.

Todd said, “Apologies! I -- I did not know --” he gaped at her, then took a few stumbling steps closer, eyes wide. “You must be -- you’re -- The Once and Future High King,” he exclaimed, voice hushed.

“...Oh my God,” Eliot guffawed. “Does that -- are you seriously...? Bambi. Are you _Arthur Pendragon?_”

“Fuck if I know,” Margo said, more than a little bemused herself but deciding to roll with it. She put a hand on her hip, raised her chin and a single, devastatingly groomed brow and said, “Oh, yeah? And what news do you have to tell your Once, Future, and Utterly Fabulous High King, hm?”

“Nothing, nothing, Your Grace,” said Todd, rifling through his pockets for coin, which he thrust toward them. “Only -- we have waited so long for you to arrive, many -- many of us had given up hope. Please, please forgive me! I did not -- we --”

The other of the small children, the little girl, said, “But that’s -- a fairy tale, it --”

“Shh,” said her brother. “We aren’t supposed to know it!”

There was so much terror in all of them, even the children. Margo could hardly draw breath through the sudden tightness of her ribs as Todd’s hand encroached in her space, the coins jingling against each other. “Please, take this. It is all I have to offer you!”

His voice was hushed, as if he were afraid of being overheard. Margo remembered all at once the fearful wariness of his voice when he’d asked _Is this a loyalty test?_ Looking down at the coin in his palm, a few cheap, grimy pieces that caught the light on dented edges, Margo saw that his hand was shaking. This was likely all he had on him, just enough money to feed himself and his children once they got to market. 

She felt herself softening, all that hard, glossy armor gone warm and melting, and hated herself a little for it. But only a little. It eased some of the tightness of her ribs so that she could breathe again. Careful, she wrapped her fingers around the man’s own, closing them tight over his meager coins.

“Don’t be weird,” she told him. “I don’t need your money, I’m an independent woman and I’ve got my own. Just -- tell me. Do you know where I can find Fen and Josh? Do you know -- who told you to look for me? About my markings?”

“The Goddess of Fillory,” Todd said, breathless and wondering.

“The _what_ now?” Eliot asked, voice lilting up high with surprise.

Margo was about to second the question -- because last she’d seen, the only god Fillory had was Bacchus pretending, and she’d been pretty instrumental in ending _that_ charade -- but before she could Todd jerked his hand back, as if burned. His children were frightened huddles behind him at their simple wooden cart. 

He went back to them, explaining in a rush over his shoulder, “I have said too much already, but -- stay near the trees. If you seek safety, that is where you might find it!”

Together, the pumpkin family ran away through the twilit woods, the creak of their cart and the fear-quickened tread of their feet nearly lost beneath the suddenly ominous rustling of leaves overhead. All in all it gave Margo unfortunate flashbacks to her Cinderella stage, pretending she had to hurry home by midnight or get turned into a pumpkin, shrieking with laughter when her dad scooped her up before making it down all the stairs.

Ugh.

“Well that... could probably have been more cryptic,” Eliot decided, leaning heavily on his cane once more, looking tired and worn out and still with his red-rimmed eyes, full of grief. He looked at Margo, attempting a smile. “I don’t think they were really _trying_, do you?”

“I’m sure we could find someone more confusing,” Margo promised him. She appreciated that he was trying, even if he did look like hell doing it. She said in as dry a tone as she could reasonably pull off: “Looks like we’re back on a fucking quest again. Shall we, dear Eliot?”

“But of course… Arthur.”  
  


\------------

Underworld Meadows  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_When Penny-40 finally deemed him prepared to move on, Quentin was ready -- ready to move forward with grace and dignity, to accept his death and whatever may come next, head held high, hands steady at his sides and --_

_“Oof!”_

_Quentin tripped over absolutely nothing as soon as he made it through the archway, because of course he did._

_“God damn it,” he sighed, straightening up and trying to get his bearings. He was in a sort of hallway, white walls and ceilings, marble floors. It went on a little ways ahead of him before turning sharply to the right. Directly to his left, stationed behind a high podium, an Underworld official was sitting, half-asleep. _

_She snorted fully awake now, startled, and peered at him blearily through thick, coke-bottle glasses. “Huh. Don’t get many coming through this one. Sorry, I need your -- er.” She waved her hand in the air, like she was questing for the word. _

_Quentin held out his metrocard because he didn’t have anything else, and he was pretty sure that as much as Penny-40 had been a little shit to him when they’d both been alive, he wouldn’t fuck with Quentin like that now._

_Not about this, at least._

_“Yes! That, thanks,” she said, taking it from him and swiping it through something Quentin couldn’t see, hidden behind the podium. Whatever it was beeped, and Quentin watched her eyes scan across -- what? A screen? The little glimpse of the Meadows he and Julia had gotten that once had barely revealed any secrets to him, save one: the length of the line he’d had to wait in already, just to be assigned Penny-40 at the end of it._

_He said, “You mean from, where? Earth? I’d think you’d get a lot of dead people from there.”_

_“Oh, yeah,” she agreed. Quentin tried to get a look at her name badge, but couldn’t. “Sure, lots from Earth. High mortality rate, that place, especially in recent years. All timelines. But you didn’t die on Earth, did you? This is the Hereafter, your new existence starts where your last ended.”_

_Oh._

_Well that was -- uh._

_Quentin swallowed nervously as the official jabbed at the something behind her podium, causing more beeps, and then: the whirr of a printer, the tear of paper. She held out to him a sheet cluttered with thin, spidery text, and said, “Here you go! Follow the hall, it’ll take you where you need to go. Hopefully the lines won’t be too long. Thanks for traveling Charon Express, enjoy your stay!”_

_“Um,” said Quentin, because what the_ fuck, _Penny-40 hadn’t said anything about this: more lines, more waiting, more weird subway-style bullshit. But then again, Penny-40 hadn’t been through the archway, had he? Penny was dead, but he wasn’t gone -- moved on, and out, from the familiar to the painfully strange._

_He really wished Julia was here to hold his hand this time around._

_But that was selfish, because that would mean Julia was dead, too. It was just Quentin here, and that -- that was good, a great thing. He’d learned that with Penny-40, talking it out, realizing that the pain he felt at leaving them all behind wasn’t something to keep him still, but something to encourage him to go on, to continue. Because he deserved happiness, and peace, and -- and --_

_“Thanks,” he managed, even though his tongue felt all clumsy and thick. He wiped a sweaty palm off on his jeans before he realized that he couldn’t sweat anymore. The paper crinkled in his other hand._

_He walked down the hall._  
  


\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Several Days Travel From Whitespire  
\------------------------------------------------------------

When planning their return journey to Fillory, Eliot and Margo had both agreed that, as much as they enjoyed a grand entrance, they should probably have Penny drop them off a fair distance away from Whitespire. Two High Kings deposed suddenly appearing in the midst of the throne room, particularly one who still bore the brands of a Fillorian Exile, was likely not their best gambit.

Lucky them, considering there was absolutely no telling what would have awaited them three hundred years in the future. Still, it was not an enjoyable hike to say the least.

“You’d think,” Margo bitched ahead of him, doing her best to find a path easy enough for Eliot to hobble over, “that after a century or two they’d have learned something about paving their damned roads! But no -- apparently this Dark Lord Wannabe felt like keeping Fillory in the Dark Ages! Fuck the industrial revolution, fuck change, fuck -- ow, fucking _rocks_.”

“Mm, you have to watch out for those,” Eliot breathed, which was about as loud as he could manage. The still healing wounds in his belly, and the -- the rest of it, the mistreatment and undernourishment of his body in the monster’s hands -- wasn’t making this trek easy.

“Don’t you dare,” Margo growled. “I do _not_ need you making jokes right now, El. What I _need_ is my crown, and my kingdom, and a hot bath full of bubbles and Josh to rub my feet --”

“Oh?” Eliot murmured, “Just your feet?”

She snorted, tossing a look of dark mirth back at him before continuing the climb. Eliot was glad he was so worn out that he barely had the strength to speak; that way she couldn’t hear the jagged edges beneath his words. 

Because despite what he’d said, Eliot was still stinging from Margo’s comment about _grief-banging_. No, more than that, he was cringing from her immediate apology, as if Eliot were some fragile creature liable to break simply because the world was a cruel, vicious place. Eliot knew its cruelty. Sometimes Eliot was its cruelty, as vicious and mean as a dog beaten by its owners well past whimpering, straight into snarling and ferality and ripping out throats before anyone could go for _his_. 

If Margo pointed out his weakness, how was Eliot meant to ignore it?

And if he couldn’t ignore it, he might -- he might start to _break_. And if he started to break Eliot felt certain that he’d do his absolute best to break everything around him in turn. He didn’t want to do that to Margo -- his Bambi, light of his life, who had given so much up to save him. 

Probably, he shouldn’t have told her about Quentin.

It was just -- after the bonfire, she had taken him home and sat him down and poured them both a generous helping of a violently chartreuse cocktail that tasted like battery acid when it wasn’t busy tasting like summer-fresh blueberries and sunshine, and said, “El, _honey_. You’ve got to tell me, what was up with that peach thing?”

Eliot knew what it said about himself that he had never told Margo the full truth of it -- that he had been afraid. That he had pushed it down so far that it was his biggest secret, his greatest shame. That he had held happiness in his cupped palms and crushed it, snuffed it out like the hope in Q’s eyes. That he was a _coward_, a worse one than he’d even known.

“Nothing, Bambi,” he’d murmured with a tilting smile, letting the drink burn down his throat. “It was -- nothing. Just a silly joke.”

“Don’t you bullshit me. I know you -- that wasn’t _nothing_. You wouldn’t have done that to Coldwater, not --”

“Margo,” Eliot tried, but -- what was the point? 

He’d never get to tell Q that he’d been wrong, that he never should have slapped aside his proof of concept, his willingness to try. Not that Eliot should have said _yes_ \-- Eliot didn’t much enjoy the idea of being chosen because he was already a done deal, because Q already _knew_ it could work. Where was the romance in that? The willingness to fight and try and push and never give up because you _wanted_ it to work, were willing to risk everything on the hope that it could, no matter the odds.

Not because you _knew_ it would.

Eliot hadn’t wanted that, that almost dismissive certainty, but he had been too afraid to explain. Instead, he had done his best to break a man who’d spent fifty years loving him, living with him, because he hadn’t been brave enough to fight for what he really wanted: not just love and surety, but passion, need. He’d been too afraid to learn that Quentin’s love for him wasn’t the kind that was _in_ love, too.

A vicious, savage attack dog, indeed.

“Honey,” Margo had said, seated across from him with an expression of such superiority and unflinching care and worry, “_Eliot_. You need to talk some of this out. Just tell me, _talk_ to me, before --”

“We -- Q and I -- Had a life, a real one. _Together_.”

“Well, yeah. I know _that_. You both told me all about it after --”

“No,” Eliot grit out. “But we _remembered_. All of it.”

Margo’s superiority vanished, a fission of confused shock clutching at her perfect features. Eliot smiled mockingly back, had touched the rim of his glass against his lower lip as if it could help hold up his facade. 

“That’s right,” he hummed, feeling dangerously self-destructive. “It was after we got back, in the throne room. There was a basket -- of peaches and plums. And a note. Quentin and I sat on the steps of the dais and _wham_, hello fifty years of domestic bliss! What a paradigm shift, let me tell you.”

“The hell do peaches and --”

“Arielle sold them,” Eliot told her, feeling suddenly breathless. His chest hurt, the one spot on him that had nothing to do with physical wounds or the mistreatment from the monster. It was just his heart, aching. “Quentin’s wife, my -- sort of sister-wife? Sure, why _not_. We can go with that. Dear, darling Arielle, the mother of mine and Quentin’s son, _Theodore_.” He couldn’t help but laugh at the look on her face. “Oh, yes. Me and Quentin in a little cottage for decades, raising our _son_. Doting on grandchildren. Fighting, fucking, _living_. I spent a whole lifetime learning to love him, Margo, and then he -- he _offered_ to --”

His voice had failed him, and words -- all of it collapsing down into a black hole, gravity sucking at his ribs, his muscles, his organs, pulling them all into a vortex of agony that centered around his heart. How, _how_ did you survive this? How did you keep pretending like you weren’t falling apart when it hurt so _much_, how could he --

“What?” Margo whispered. “Wait, _what_, he --”

“Proof of concept,” Eliot had replied, too tired and hollowed out, breath hitching, and this was why he shouldn’t have started talking, because now he couldn’t stop, even while his chest caved in and his bones shattered and Margo sat across from him, stricken and fearful and so, so fucking sorry. He’d gasped, “Quentin wanted to try and -- and make it work between us, again -- but I shut him down, Margo. I _shut him down_, I practically laughed in his face, and then -- with the monster, I --- I was so _wrong_, so now -- I was going to -- I --”

Well, it hadn’t been pretty.

In fact, it had been so ugly that even when Margo had held him, murmuring, “Tits up, El. We’ll get through this -- somehow,” she’d said it like Eliot was made of glass, a fragile flower barely clinging to life, something delicate to be protected. And he loved her for it and hated it, and it was still going even here, now, in Fillory, and -- 

_Grief-banging_.

She’d apologized, and he’d forgiven her. Maybe she thought it was really fine, just one more pebble tossed into a bottomless pond, and that it had barely caused a ripple in Eliot’s heart. Maybe she knew -- like she knew _him_ \-- that he was lying, faking it, because he couldn’t drown his sorrows in booze like he’d done once before, because Q wouldn’t forgive him if he did, and -- and she wasn’t inside of Eliot’s head. She couldn’t _know_ that it wasn’t just the fact that the one person he’d want to grief-bang was the one that he was _grieving_. She couldn’t see how his memories tried to get the better of him, to remind him of all the grief-banging he and Quentin had done after Arielle was gone, when Q had turned to him and asked to be touched, to be loved, to feel something -- anything -- other than the pain of loss for just a little while. 

How Eliot had seen the trap of it -- of Q relying on him, of Q needing him, but for all the wrong reasons -- and been too weak and selfish to stop it. Had just given and taken in equal measure, and buried the part of himself that asked time and again over the years, in his weakest moments -- does he only want this because it’s convenient? 

It made him bitter, remembering. He had been _so good_ at not remembering. 

Before the monster, before the happy place, before finding that _fucking_ door.

And then he’d had nothing to do _but_ remember. And it --

It was just --

Fuck.

It just wasn’t _fair_, now was it?  
  


\------------

Underworld Meadows  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_The paper had Quentin’s credentials on it -- place of birth, duration of life, circumstances of death. It tallied up his sins and his transgressions and calculated the good work he’d done and declared Suggested Destination: Elysium at the bottom of the slip. Which was great, because Quentin hadn’t really wanted to go to hell. It also said Sub-Class: Quester, Sub-Class: Hero, which he tried not to feel too smug about, but failed._

_He tried not to linger on the sins and transgressions._

_Mostly he couldn’t read it, the type going a little blurry and funny looking every time he tried to focus, but he caught glimpses -- model planes and cancer, Midtown Mental Health Clinic; plums, and card tricks, and Julia and he under a table with a map done in crayon. Quentin was afraid to look closer, to see what outsiders might consider wrong, when some of the best things he’d ever done had been, perhaps, done badly. He’d worked through a lot of shit with Penny-40 across the desk, but he still felt an instinctive, squirming snake of guilt and regret twining through his belly when he thought of Alice, of giving her false hope when he’d known she wasn’t what he really wanted, but had been so scared and so alone by the end that he’d -- he’d wanted to at least give her what he himself had been denied. _

_He tried not to think about Eliot, but he couldn’t help assuming that he was the reason the details spanned far longer than his measly two decades and change could possibly warrant. He rubbed his thumb over the thin, glossy sheet, a reverent arc over the cramped, swimming words that added up all the good, and his eyes blurred with tears for a moment, making it impossible to catch even glimpses._

_He could guess what would be there, though: Teddy, Arielle, that one time he stayed up all night singing lullabies to his granddaughter when she’d been sick._

_Shaking his head, he pushed the memories aside._

_The hallway opened up to a hub, countless souls just like him waiting to be processed, to move on. He reached for the fuzzy, quiet peace that Penny-40 had given him, that he had found watching his friends -- his family -- around that bonfire. But it was difficult, and he worried about that little distinction -- that his final destination was suggested, rather than certain. _

_What was that saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions? _

_Well, he just hoped that was only a human saying, and that intent was what was important to these gods. Not that he’d had much luck with gods, but -- Again, Quentin shook his head, trying to calm his brain, to quiet his anxiety, the hungry spiral that had him asking questions, that kept him, as always, from being content, okay, that murmured to him --_

Is this it? Is this all there is? 

What’s the point if this is all you’re going to get?

_He looked at the paper again, the way it kept trying to curl up tight, as if to protect its secrets. He reminded himself that it told the tale of everything he’d done, all he’d had to give -- and that it was enough. It should be enough. It had to be enough. Taking a deep breath, Quentin got into line._


	3. Chapter Two

  
  
  


****

#### CHAPTER TWO

****

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Several Days Travel From Whitespire  
\------------------------------------------------------------

Eliot didn’t really want to admit it, but it was possible, _maybe_, that Fillory of the future was prettier than theirs. “I think there are more trees,” Eliot said, slumping against one with a wince. “That seems likely, considering Fillory _still_ hasn’t learned a thing about deforestation in the name of civilization.” Eliot reached behind him gingerly to pat the trunk of the nice tree keeping him propped up. “You lucky thing, you.”

“Stay near the trees,” Margo grumped, setting up some sort of camp for them. “So helpful, what wonderful advice. Bah!” 

With dusk encroaching, turning the woods and the meandering path they’d followed murky and uncertain, Margo had decided to take the advice to stay near the trees to heart by stomping her way _into_ the woods, and hauling Eliot over roots and burrows until they came to a small clearing, barely visible in the dwindling light. They weren’t the first to find refuge here, apparently: there was a fire pit in the center, cold and unused for some time, but -- it seemed to bode well, at least.

Slowly, Eliot let gravity take him until his ass was firmly nestled between two bulging roots, and the damp earth was soaking through his trousers. “You’ve got all of --” he waved a hand limply “-- this, right? Wonderful, yes, of course you do. I’m just going to close my eyes for a second, mm, yes, that’s nice.”

And it was _very_ nice, actually, because Eliot was so worn out from the traveling and the adrenaline and the boredom and the grief that he was very nearly trembling where he sat, beyond exhaustion. Still, he didn’t like having his eyes closed, not when he couldn’t yet afford to slip into the oblivion of slumber. Like this, it was too easy for memories to splash across his mind, vivid and painful. So he blinked his eyes stubbornly back open and drawled out, “Have I told you lately how _rugged_ you are, Bambi?”

Margo rolled her eyes, which Eliot could only see by the fire she’d just magicked into being. It really did get dark _quickly_ in the woods, didn’t it?

“Shut your piehole and come over here, El,” she said, in that warm, slow purr that meant she was pleased but not willing to be distracted by it. “I’m _not_ having you catch pneumonia or hypothermia or whatever else.” Another few quick movements, Margo’s hands graceful in the campfire light, and there were two cots beside the fire, made up with heavy furs and plump pillows, and a table on the other side with a basin full of water, rags beside it.

It made his breath catch, just for a moment. The startling reality of magic, that it was a part of him, that he could perform miracles; but not real ones. He struggled with a sudden memory -- Arielle’s tired laughter while he and Q created light shows, glittering constellations that erupted into chrysanthemum fireworks, in the warm, safe space of their little cottage as she lay dying. He shook his head to clear it, and thought instead about Margo, alive and terrifyingly competent. He focused on the here and now, on the pieces of reality he could stand to linger over: the working she’d performed wasn’t anything Eliot had seen before. He’d recognized some of the figures as being Oceanic derivatives, but that was all he could catch.

“No, really,” Eliot protested, “utterly _rugged_, who even are you? And just why haven't I ever seen that spell before?”

“I'm a survivor,” Margo replied grimly. She stood, brushing off the dirt clinging to her knees before striding over and hauling Eliot upright, despite his protests. A little more humor suffused into her voice as she confided: “Also, I had a week-long fuck-a-thon with an Aussie summer after our first year at Brakebills. He knew a thing or two about _roughing_ it.”

Eliot grinned. “Ah, there she is.” 

It made Margo laugh, at least. “As for why you haven't seen it yet -- I never could remember the movements correctly. I looked it up in Marina's library before we left, something that I never, ever want to have to do again, because Marina had some sick, _twisted_ tastes. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"

"Hm. Sick and twisted, you say?"

"Okay, no," Margo said, rolling her eyes, but still clearly amused. "Trust me, they were _not_ the fun kind of sick and twisted. Now shut up and come over here! Let’s eat and get some sleep. No telling what ridiculous bullshit this jacked up, nutso world is going to throw at us tomorrow.”

She wasn’t wrong, so Eliot finally stopped trying to slap her demanding hands away, stood up under his own shaky power, and went to the fire. He ate what Margo handed him and listened to the sounds of the forest. It was familiar. He’d spent decades living in a little pocket of the woods, after all. With the stars pin pricking the sky overhead and the crisp autumn breeze, it was nearly comforting, if only it didn’t bring with it so much longing. 

The funny thing about gaining memories back of his and Quentin’s time in Fillory was that he remembered it all in the same way. There was no softening of the earliest memories, nor of the ones closest to his own death. He remembered it all simultaneously as if it had just happened, which wasn’t the way the brain was usually meant to process time. Magic fucked everything up, so Eliot, now that he was _looking_, kept being bombarded by all these memories he’d once held so stiffly at bay. 

And here, now, curling up obediently into his little cot under Margo’s watchful eye, stranded out of time in the woods in Fillory, it was all too easy to remember Quentin’s body pressed up against his. That cottage had been _tiny_ and dirty at the start, so they’d spent plenty of nights camping out under the stars. 

And they’d been two lonely souls, craving comfort and intimacy even before they’d ever fucked. 

But then --

“Let’s leave the overthinking for _this_,” Eliot had said that first time, turning the focus to the mosaic. Too afraid to let Quentin study him closely, even then, the night when _Quentin_ had chosen to kiss him, to move first. To take a chance. And Q had gone along with Eliot’s suggestion, willing to be deflected, but -- what would have happened if Eliot hadn’t dismissed it afterward? If Eliot had let Quentin finish his first, stumbling, morning-after thoughts?

Eliot couldn’t regret it, not quite. They’d gotten Theodore out of it after all, and he had loved Arielle in his own way, as well as he could possibly have done. But maybe --

_Maybe_ \--

Eliot let his eyes drift shut, cold all over even beneath the heavy fur blankets. It was too late to wonder, even though wondering was all he had left. A whole miserable line of what-ifs, of thinking: _if only you’d been brave then, or just after, or even here in this moment, or that time six years down the road, if only_ \--

If only.  


\----

  
They woke almost as soon as they’d fallen asleep, shortly after sundown.

“What was -- ?”

“Shh,” hissed Eliot, who knew a thing or two about the creeping sensation of something monstrous near, looking for you. His skin shuddered and his palms sweat, and he had to swallow twice to get his heart back where it belonged. 

In the trees something moved.

No, not something, but _several_ somethings. Too dark to see properly with their fire so low, barely more than a warm orange glow. Still, Eliot had the sense of being surrounded. But now that both he and Margo had woken and seemed to be staying that way, the spell reacted -- the fire bloomed, warm and crackling bright, and lit up the gnarled, wide tree trunks around them, throwing everything into grim relief, including dark shapes lumbering through the undergrowth, twigs cracking beneath their feet like brittle bones --

No.

That wasn't right. That was Eliot's own nerves expecting a sound track to accompany what he saw, all senses on high alert and listening hard for the noises that would make his pulse jump and shudder. But there was nothing. No sound, just silence. That was what had woken them: the unnatural quiet of a wood devoid of life, of nocturnal sound. These were not dark shapes casting long shadows.

They _were_ shadows.

Eliot felt his skin go cold and tight, a fear response. His stomach clenched, his eyes went too wide and dry in the cool air as he forgot to blink, trying to comprehend what it was he was seeing. Because mobile shadows cast by nothing at all just _didn’t make sense_.

And yet, there they were.

_Shadows_, inhumanly-tall, their forms somehow splintered in shape. With the fire bright and them so near, Eliot saw more details than he wanted: hunched backs and low, sweeping heads as they prowled. A great many of them, _far_ too many, and Eliot could only assume there were more further away because that would be just their kind of luck; worse than bad. Eliot didn’t know if they were looking for them specifically, or simply _looking_, had no clue what manner of creature they truly were, whether spell or god had crafted them. He knew only that, even after having been held captive by a sociopathic god, for some reason these beings still _terrified_ him.

“Holy fuck,” Margo said, voice low, as one headed right at them, angling toward a gap in the trees.

Scrambling, Eliot went to her. She grasped his arm about the elbow, grip tight and clawing. Battle spells, battle spells, they _knew_ them, but Eliot searched frantically in his mind for the right one, the best one, the one that might do something against improbably shadows when they were positively _surrounded_ by them, hopelessly outnumbered, and entirely without escape. 

He couldn’t think of any.

“El…” Margo started to say, just as that shadow came closer, closer, and now they could see that it had no eyes, no face, no nostrils. It's head was bulbous, vaguely humanoid, but so _wrong_, entirely faceless. 

Eliot murmured, “Get ready to run, Margo.”

He felt her stiffen against him, knowing immediately how that would play out -- Eliot unable to run, still recovering, would be left behind as a distraction for her. He could feel the NO she wanted to shout quivering in her shoulders, and prepared to push her off the cot, away from him. He probably wouldn't be fine, but Margo might be, if Eliot could only figure out a way to make enough of a nuisance of himself.

"Don't argue," he grit out, "Please. You have to run, Margo, you have to --"

It was no more than eight steps away.

"-- you have to save Josh," Eliot gulped, trembling, because he was scared but he was also _right_. There was no other possible way. He twisted his arm free, or tried to; Margo refused to let go. "Bambi, _please_, you have to!"

Six steps.

"Don't you tell me what to do," Margo snarled.

She let go of him, finally, but only so she could leap to her feet, raise her arms like she could somehow find the knowledge they needed in order to defeat this faceless, strange enemy. This creeping darkness that was insubstantial, and yet so powerful a feeling in their guts, their minds and hearts, that they knew without needing confirmation just how bad it might be if such a monster spotted them. Which was about to happen, in fact, the shadow creeping ever closer to the circle of their clearing, the light of the magic fire. 

He heaved himself to his feet, determined not to let Margo do anything stupid as the shadow came yet another step closer, but then -- something changed. 

Margo froze, and Eliot as well, because time seemed to slow, gone thick like molasses. Suddenly, there was not just the fear of the shadows, but the feel of something else, something _other_. 

There came a sound like a whisper through the trees. 

It was not natural.

Even without that sudden texture to the air, they would have known because the wind had died, the air completely still; and yet there came a rustling of leaves and branches, creaking, groaning, murmuring, as though the trees were alive. But this was _not_ the sentient tree forest so -- so that shouldn’t be happening. What the _fuck_ was happening?

Eliot couldn't move his mouth to ask, couldn't even breathe. Time was no longer treacle-slow, but _stopped_. It held them suspended like a bug in amber, that feeling of something other growing, building, strumming, and all of Fillory held its breath, held it and held it, could do nothing else until the moment snapped suddenly back into place. The world breathed once more, and so did they. Gasping, Eliot staggered against the cot.

Unfortunately, the shadows could move again as well.

Three steps.

"The hell was _that_," Margo complained, dropping her arms. She gave up on a spell and instead looped her arms about Eliot's waist, holding him tightly so that he couldn’t slip away; he hissed, startled by it, and then panicked further to think that she might go down with him, when there was so much she still had to do -- a Kingdom to save, a lover to rescue, a life to live.

He never thought that this strange, other presence might save them, because that wasn't how the world worked.

"You have to try," Margo told him. "I won't leave you, so you have to _try_."

One step left.

“Margo,” he murmured. “You have to let go, you have to -- oh!”

The trees had all fallen silent.

But that feeling that had held the world suspended hadn't left, as he'd thought. It was still there, and how Eliot hadn't realized that he didn't know, because this was a magic so big it felt crushing. But now it didn't feel quite so _other_, the reverberations of it thick in the air like a lingering, familiar song, comforting and warm, bigger and bolder than he was used to. It filled his chest like a swell of relief tinged with fear, as if it could transform him into something new, somehow, if it weren’t careful, and it was trying so very, very hard to _be_ careful. Eliot felt sweat drip down his neck, his body struggle to be still as whatever was being cast grew and grew and _grew_ \--

A golden-white, sparking glow sprung from one tree trunk to another, until all around Margo and Eliot stood a perfect ring of glowing trees. 

The pressure inside Eliot’s body intensified, one more uncomfortable swell, and then the spell snapped into completion, leaving Eliot and Margo shuddering and gasping once more, but whole, unbroken. Between each towering, glowing oak came a shimmering veil, transparent and beautiful, that grew into a protective barrier as tall and strong and ancient as the trees.

The shadow a mere step from discovering them swung its ill-formed head to the side, and lumbered away. All of the shadows that came near, in fact, turned aside, easily wandering along a different path. None entered the line of trees. None even seemed to notice it.

“Holy _fuck_, El.”

“Huh,” Eliot said, blinking and swallowing and trying to steady the shaking in his hands. Perhaps he was too used to Fillory and its fuckery, or perhaps he was too scared and exhausted and _in shock_ to have much more reaction now that the danger had seemingly passed. Or _was_ passing, because even as the shadows that had been so near were gently repelled, more came closer. They, too, were sent away, but how many were there? How long would the barrier hold? Who had even made it in the first place?

Fuck, but Eliot was not up for this much adrenaline. He settled for saying a little weakly, “That was -- different. That farmer _did_ say keep close to the trees.”

As if in response, the tree-barrier flickered brighter before settling back into its steady, protective glow.

“I hate this cryptic bullshit,” Margo complained, pulling Eliot down onto her own cot where they huddled, peering out nervously past the still glowing barricade. “I appreciate the assist,” she said waspishly to the trees, “but I’d really, _really_ appreciate knowing just exactly what kind of assfuckery is going on in _my_ kingdom. What are those things?!”

“No clue,” said Eliot once it became obvious the trees didn’t have a handy response. 

“How the hell are we meant to sleep _now_, with all these -- these _things_ crawling around?!”

After all that excitement, Eliot never wanted to move ever again. With the relief of disaster averted, a heaviness fell over him, exhaustion and an inability to handle finding the answers to all those questions. He couldn't worry about how long the barrier would hold, if there was anything that he might do to bolster it, or some spell he and Margo might concoct in order to escape to a more certain safety. He thought sleep sounded wonderful, and he let his body sort of slither down into the cot and blankets, staring wearily up at the stars overhead, dimmer now that they had to fight against the brilliance of the -- the whatever the hell it was protecting them.

“Margo, I highly doubt that whatever did _this_,” he flung one arm out toward the barrier in dramatic fashion, “is going to just drop it. Too much work went into creating it in the first place. It’ll take _hours_ for that spell to run out of steam, if it's even going to. And I know you know this, you felt the power of it building as well as I did.”

“Ugh,” agreed Margo, “Which _sucked_, actually. Felt like I was a balloon about to pop. Fine, sure. Maybe we're safe. But consider this: we are still _surrounded by creepy shadows_, El!”

“True enough.” Eliot dug out his flask. “Drink to forget your troubled woes?”

“Oh, thank God,” Margo breathed. “You do have it. _Fuck yes_.”  
  


\------------

Underworld Meadows  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_Being dead was weird._

_And also: still full of things that were annoying as shit apparently._

_“Jesus,” he muttered, shifting anxiously in line. He tilted a bit, trying to see past it without actually moving his feet from their place -- last time he had half-stepped away the woman behind him had viciously tried to get him kicked back in line, which, no. Quentin was not doing that. Because the lines were just as bad this time through as they had been the first. _

_How long had he been waiting? Sometimes it felt like an eternity; others, like he’d only been shuffling along for a minute or two. He knew it was more than that, but how much more? Was this part of how being dead got to you? This sense of impermanence? The way that time flowed around you but never touched you, until both you and it seemed to lose all meaning, all substance, and then -- what was the point after that, right?_

_“I keep telling myself,” said the old guy in front of him in a despairing little mutter, “that Nan’s cranberry muffins are gonna be worth it. But are they? Can I even eat here? I’m not even thirsty, what --”_

_An official -- harassed, irritated, and with a professional bullshit smile -- slapped a pamphlet against the old man’s arm as they passed, chirping out, “Some reading material while you wait!” It slipped down to the floor before the old man could grab it, nearly crushed beneath the official’s swiftly stepping foot._

_What was with these employees, anyway? Was Quentin meant to get a job or something? Instead of an after-school gig, an after-life one, or maybe a nine-to-five but in decades rather than hours?_

_Fuck, people really didn’t know shit about being dead, did they?_

_“Hold on,” said Quentin, full of ingrained reflex. The guy, dead or not, had to be about seventy. Quentin picked up the pamphlet for him, careful not to fall out of line. “I -- got it. Here,” He offered the pamphlet over. It was bright colors and photos of cheerful people, and it said: THE INS AND OUTS OF AFTERLIFE SNACKING, FEASTING, AND BINGE EATING_

_“Thanks.”_

_“So your Nan, huh?” Quentin asked, mostly because he was that fucking bored and irritated. “Looking forward to seeing her?”_

_The old man flipped through the pamphlet, half-turned in line still so Quentin could see how he grimaced. “I guess so. She died when I was a young boy. I never really thought about her much after a point. But her muffins -- they were good. The only nice thing about my childhood I remember. When I got old, I found myself thinking about them. Just the muffins, the taste, the texture -- not really Nan, though.”_

_Quentin’s mouth did a funny thing, because hell if he knew whether to smile or frown or make a noise of apology for bringing up what was apparently an unhappy childhood. “Oh, uh… Right.”_

_A mocking look was turned on Quentin -- even the harridan of a lady behind him snorted. Quentin tried not to blush, indignant all over again that even dead he was as socially awkward and obvious about it as when he’d been alive. _

_“The thing, though,” the old man told him, quirking a brow, “is whether it’s going to -- and pardon the pun -- live up to the imagining. Memories often elevate a thing. Reality -- even dead reality -- might be a disappointment.”_

_“Are we allowed to be disappointed?”_

_“Depends,” said the woman behind Q. “Are we going to get to be ourselves, or are we all going to turn into zombies here? Like some weird, perpetually high happy people, just going through the motions. Heaven always sounded so fake to me, I mean --”_

_Quentin had craned his neck around to look at her -- middle-aged, bright lipstick, worry lines around her eyes. Her flow of words stopped when a pamphlet smacked her in the temple. The same official from earlier -- bullshit smile not quite slipping, not yet -- said brightly: “All these pamphlets were well-stocked. I know it, because I just checked! They’re there for your benefit, you know. Would you like me to grab one of each for all of you?”_

_“Oh, hey. Yeah, that'd be great,” said Quentin, because so far all he had to occupy himself with were countless questions, and dead or alive he knew a best defense was knowledge -- always, always knowledge. “Er, please.”_

_Finally, the bullshit smile slipped a little._

_“I…” was probably joking, Quentin thought, and smiled at them with something that was nearly like joy, thinking of Margo and Eliot and Kady and Penny-40 and all of their little petty triumphs at causing an inconvenience. Jesus, how exactly had Q wound up friends with so many assholes? It was like he’d been a magnet for trouble and sarcasm._

_The thought was enough to make his smile wobble a little, missing them, before Quentin managed to make it widen further, into his own special bullshit smile. He blinked innocently at the official and waited._

_“Ugh, fine. A moment, please,” they grumbled._

_Quentin rocked back on his heels and said back: “No worries. I’ll just -- be here. Probably for eternity. Yaay.”_  
  


\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Several Days Travel From Whitespire  
\------------------------------------------------------------

They managed to sleep in stilted stretches, startling awake any time their subconscious recalled the terror that surrounded them. It was with equal parts regret and relief that, when the sun began its ascent and the strange shadows dwindled, faded and left, and the magical tree protection with it, Margo and Eliot began preparing to travel on far less sleep than would have been ideal.

“We can wait,” Margo offered, staring off through the trees toward Whitespire. A twisted expression marred her pretty face, mouth pursed. “You’re not at full strength, and it won’t do us any good if you crap out in the middle of --”

“I’ll be _fine_, darling,” Eliot told her, stretching gingerly and refusing to grimace when everything ached, like one solid bruise with a few special places that were white-hot agony. He wouldn’t be fine, but he’d survive it nonetheless. Seeing Margo’s skepticism, he added: “I’ve been dealt worse hands, and you _know_ how I feel about camping.”

He gave a theatrical shudder and carefully avoided saying what _he_ knew -- that Margo was impatient to get to Josh, to try and rescue him and Fen, to see how much damage they would need to undo, _if_ they could. The longer they waited the more helpless and hopeless she’d feel. Margo had already chosen Eliot so many times, the least he could do here and now was to try and help at least _one_ of them have a Happily Ever After. Margo, of everyone, deserved it.

“All right,” Margo relented. “But at least eat something. You need the calories.”

The thought of food turned his stomach sour, but Eliot forced himself. He didn’t want Margo making sideways inquiries into whether or not Eliot was feeling particularly suicidal -- he was already braced for her to fuss about his willingness to be left behind the night before, but so far, with the confusion of little sleep and stress, she hadn’t pressed, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t waiting for a moment when Eliot was feeling particularly weak and unprepared for an offensive. 

And Eliot _wasn’t_ feeling suicidal, not really. It was only that he'd rather die than be forced to grieve yet another person he loved, and also that he just had very little energy left to fight with, it seemed. He _certainly_ did not have the energy to try arguing the distinction between suicidal and desperately protective with Margo. So he ate fare that tasted like sawdust and glue in the hopes it might appease her, and smiled wearily but genuinely at Margo whenever he caught her staring at him with squinty, worried eyes. 

Eventually, though, when the worried looks never ceased, he realized that, as much as he was loathe to do it, he had to give her _something_ more substantial to work with. “I won’t leave you either,” Eliot offered, the only promise he could really make. “Not willingly, Bambi.”

She didn't pretend to misunderstand him. "So you'll try. You won't give up. No more of this noble, self-sacrificing bullshit. I can't -- not again, okay?"

"Right," Eliot said, trying to keep the grief out of his voice, knowing who it was she referred to. Quentin, and all his good intentions. A hero who had made them all cry, in the end, and Eliot most of all. He sighed, and, rattled and raw, protested: "Like you're one to talk. What do you call nobly deciding to die right next to me, hm? You had to know it was a loss cause if I had to run. We wouldn't have --"

"Shut up," Margo said, low and dark.

Eliot did.

He also breathed in deep, though it hurt. He had been right, he didn't have the energy for this fight, so he forced himself to murmur out, "I'm sorry. You're... right. Of course you are."

“Good,” she said. “Because I went through far too much effort to get you back, El. Don’t you dare make that worthless.”

Eliot smiled some more, knowing it was twisted at the side, bitter and full of too much pain, too much history; he was long acquainted with endeavors that never panned out, with the pain of trying and trying just to have every effort be in vain. He tried not to think of Q, of all that hope turned as insubstantial as air, as sunlight. It was awful, this feeling, but Eliot forced a second helping of breakfast down his throat when Margo foisted it upon him. It sat uneasily in his stomach, but it made Margo nod with approval; her shoulders relaxed, just slightly.

\----

After breakfast they packed their few belongings away and Margo canceled her camping spell. They lingered in the clearing only long enough to give a cursory look over the campsite and the woods nearby where the not-quite-corporeal shadows had tred, trying a few diagnostic spells and Margo’s fairy eye. But their investigation revealed little more than that the grove had, indeed, been touched briefly with a magic that reeked of godhood, which had been both Margo and Eliot's suspicion. Of the shadows there was no trace, no hint of their existence, neither scent nor taste nor lingering magical residue. 

Which was unnerving, to say the least, as was the confirmation that there was a new god in Fillory. Other than that, though, the only thing of note in the clearing were an abundance of carved sigils. 

“This new goddess’ sign, you think?” Eliot asked, tilting his head at one of them: a rough circle enclosing an even rougher interpretation of a tree. The line of oaks that enclosed the clearing each bore one, chiseled painstakingly into their trunks, all the way to the heartwood. The sigils looked like wounds, too deep to recover from.

Eliot was rather disgusted that neither he nor Margo had been alert enough to notice them the evening before.

“If it is her mark,” Margo said dryly, “then she’s hardly original. It looks kind of like the Tree of Life, doesn’t it? I’ve never seen anything like this here in Fillory, though.”

“Mysteries upon mysteries,” Eliot murmured, leaning hard on his cane, staring absently at the vibrant, living flesh of the tree beneath the chipped away bark, the squiggly lines meant to be roots and branches. The sun was barely up in the sky and already he was worn out, weary of yet another life-threatening puzzle set before them. And maybe it was because of that, or maybe it was because of what Margo had said earlier, about noble self-sacrifice, or maybe, _maybe_ it was because Eliot's heart never strayed far from the thought of him these days, but he found himself saying out of nowhere: “Quentin would have loved this.”

He sucked in a tight breath immediately after, horrified that he'd uttered that so casually.

But Margo laughed. The sound of it was like a startled bird, yet a little thick with sadness, and somehow it was enough to ease and soften the tension in his body, the pain twisting about his heart. Eliot to let go of that frightened, pained breath he'd been holding, waiting for those words to come back around and hurt him, to draw blood. 

They were just words, and Quentin now nothing more than memory. It was _good_ to say things like that, a way to keep him alive the only way Eliot could.

“He was such a _nerd_,” Margo agreed, “He loved figuring this shit out. I…”

She swallowed it down, but Eliot heard the rest of the sentiment anyway: _I miss him_.

“Yeah,” Eliot agreed, voice too rough.

It was good to say these things, Eliot was certain, but maybe now wasn't the best time. Because it had been a long night and even well-fed he still didn't have any energy with which to fight, not against Margo, and definitely not against his own grief. So he cleared his throat and turned away from the memories, both good and bad, and instead finished collecting his things. Margo watched in hesitant silence before she began to mirror him. It was a relief to not have her pressing against the edges of his wounds, trying to open him up so that he could finish bleeding out. Later, he thought. Later, much later, maybe he'd be able to cry and cry until he didn't need to anymore.

For now, though, they both started back through the woods, shoulder to shoulder as they trudged along and stubbornly refused to look back, to linger, because they didn’t have time to indulge. 

They couldn’t risk it, because grief, once it got its hooks into you, was always reluctant to let go again. 

Eliot was glad, suddenly, that he was so tired, so full of physical hurt and exhaustion. It made it easier to empty his mind, to just drift, to exist without fear or worry or regret. For a time he made an existence out of that, an ocean of white noise in his head as he worked on putting one foot in front of the other, limping along behind Margo. They walked through the trees and then, once they found the trail, through the quiet, empty woods. 

It was nearly peaceful.

It could also never last.

“Hey,” said Margo, coming to a stop atop a ridge where the trail jackknifed, hands planted on her hips. Eliot focused on her, maybe for the first time in hours. The quality of the sunlight seemed like afternoon, warm and honey thick as it always became during harvest time. Somehow, Margo looked in her element like this -- dirty and sweating, flushed with the exertion of motion; her eyes even sparkled when she looked back at Eliot over her shoulder.

Oh, God, Eliot realized all at once: His Bambi was a tried and true _Quester_ now, wasn’t she?

“How about that town?” she said, ignoring Eliot’s expression of despair and horror to point down the slope.

Eliot gave up mourning the old Margo Hanson he met and fell in love with at Brakebills, and instead shuffled up next to the new, probably improved Margo Hanson, who he loved even more. He should have realized the extent of the change when he first saw those frankly terrifying battle axes of hers; Margo had said it herself just last night, that she was a survivor.

“I know I’ve never said it before,” Eliot murmured, almost too soft for her to hear. “But really, rugged _is_ a good look on you, my dear.”

Margo snorted. “Does it turn you on?”

“Makes me swoon,” Eliot assured her, smiling a little. He leaned heavily once more on his ornate cane, exhausted all over again from _feeling_ something, but at least it was a healthy sort of exhaustion. A second later he tried to lean less heavily on his cane, that healthy exhaustion easily flowing back into the more burdensome kind. His palm ached from the pressure, from how often it felt as though the cane was all that was there to hold him up. Even his fingers hurt from how he gripped it, and damn, he loved the look of his cane, he really did, but the intricate metalwork was starting to imprint itself on his skin. Maybe, if he was feeling up to it later, he’d put a cushioning charm on it. He probably would have already if he weren’t so busy passive aggressively punishing himself with the discomfort, trying to use it to allay some of his guilt at surviving when others... didn't. 

“Well?” Margo snapped, interrupting his musings. She impatiently pointed once more. “That town, there. What do you think?”

“Hmm?”

"Jesus Christ, Eliot," sighed Margo, and then reached over and tilted Eliot's head by the chin, until he was blinking down at the town in question.

It was sprawled rather comfortably in the near distance, easily seen from their vantage point. In fact, a fair amount of Fillory was easily seen, somehow still _painfully_ rustic despite three hundred some odd years having passed in Fillorian history. Time had left Margo and Eliot behind, but apparently Fillory had stood unflinching against that ever-forward march, resisting change. They probably still didn’t have drinkable champagne, Eliot realized.

"Yes, okay," he said, to distract himself from that depressing thought. "Why am I looking at this town again?"

“We have to go somewhere! To stop in and ask about this _Voldemort_ fellow,” Margo explained, a heavy twist of displeased irony on her tongue, infecting her words. “I need to Avada Kedavra his ass off my throne, and I want a good monologue for it, but I need to know at least _something_ about this Dark Fuck who thinks he’s got the lady parts to handle _my_ kingdom. We can't just go straight to Whitespire, we need information!”

That made sense, but Eliot barely even heard her. He was too busy staring down at the town, hardly breathing, eyes darting all over the terrain. Because that -- that hill there, and that river which turned, forking into two glittering ribbons part way through a small wood to the east of the town, it --

“Not there,” he grit out. 

Too sharply, apparently. Margo turned to him abruptly, her bluster flowing down off her shoulders into something closer to concern.

“El?”

“Not _there_,” he said. 

Because even if it had been several centuries, that town was recognizable to him. He knew it, and whereas before -- before the monster, before Eliot had realized exactly what he’d given up, before he’d lost any chance to _fight_ for it -- he had been able to turn his head and pretend like he didn’t know it intimately, like nothing of the streets or the placement of the tavern or the open green was familiar, aching and grasping at him with memories of Teddy’s children running screaming with laughter up that hill so they could roll _down_ it. 

Later, he'd promised himself, _later_ he could break down and fall apart and wallow until the pain saw fit to let him ago again, but if Eliot went down there, to that town, then the person that Eliot was _now_ \-- well, he might want to push aside the memories just as he’d done before, but he _couldn’t_, he wouldn't be able to. 

Not now, not after -- after --

Fuck. 

Eliot closed his eyes, tight enough to hurt. He ground his teeth, scraped his palm along the hard edges of his cane, trying to keep hold of himself. But it was hard, it was impossible, and this had been exactly what he'd feared, but he didn't know how to fight this either.

_Fuck_ Quentin, what a god damned asshole he was for _dying_ before Eliot could even say thank you -- for giving him the best years of his life, for saving Eliot, for not giving up on him even after Eliot had turned his back on him so many times, in so many ways, how _dare_ he.

Eliot had always known love could be painful. He just hadn’t realized it could hurt like _this_.

"El!" Margo said again.

“Peaches,” he murmured, blinking open his eyes and defiantly wrenching his gaze from the familiar tumble of the town streets, instead casting it out toward the horizon rather than see Margo’s tightening expression or reveal to her the raw wound of his own. Carefully, he sucked in slow, steady breaths, trying to ignore the pathetic, limping gate of his heart as it raced within his chest. Grief still waited to snare him, those hooks poised over his organs, ready to rend. But he had told Margo he wouldn't leave her, had promised her that, so he couldn't.

“O-_kay_,” she drawled out, thankfully letting peaches act as a safeword, an explanation and apology and desperate plea for her not to pry, all in one. She clenched a hand in her hair with a gusty sigh. “Fine. That’s -- fine. That town is peaches, sure. But then where, huh? We have to --”

“There,” Eliot said, pointing just slightly north-west of the town he and Quentin had frequented during their long ago quest. Farther away, but it was big, bigger than a town, and most of all Eliot didn’t know fuck-all about the city. Nothing had existed there even during Margo’s rule as High King, which -- good.

That was great, because Eliot couldn’t bear the memories of Teddy and Quentin and _happiness_ that might emerge at any turn of a familiar street. It was already too much with just this one bird’s eye glance. Better something entirely unknown, blessedly strange and new, for him to get lost in. He clenched his fingers around his cane, tight enough to pinch, and drawled out in a passing mimicry of his usual carelessness: “That looks almost like a proper _city_, now doesn’t it Bambi? Look at our little back-water Fillory, trying to pretend to be _civilized_. How quaint.”

“Hm.” Margo pressed her shoulder against his, peering out across the distance. It would be hours more effort to reach, but it also stood nearer to Whitespire, nearly in its shadow. “They’d have done better focusing on _roads_. But, well. A _city_. Maybe they’ll have happy hour.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath,” Eliot snorted. He took her arm in his, squeezing it, and mustered up the courage to once more put aside the memories, at least for a moment, and then another moment, followed by the next, so that he could say and _mean_ it: “But I suppose we could always introduce them to that wonderful concept, if not.”

“A whole new generation of lushes,” Margo grinned. “Ours to corrupt!”  
  


\------------

Underworld Meadows  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_“Hey, line’s moving,” said Stephanie, the not-actually-a-harridan behind Quentin. She nudged him gently in the back and Q grappled helplessly with the pamphlets in his arms, somehow managing not to drop any that he hadn’t read yet. _

_“Thanks,” he said, shaking his short hair back from his eyes. He shuffled forward, peering curiously down at the remaining fifty-some shiny folds of paper still tucked into his elbows and fists and every available pocket. “I wonder if there’s something about personal hygiene in here,” he mumbled, half to himself. “If I’d known I was going to die I might’ve done a cosmetic spell to grow my hair out a little longer. It’s always in my eyes at this length. Think it’ll grow?”_

_“At this point,” said Stephanie dryly, “I no longer have any questions about being dead. I’m looking forward to the mystery. Please stop talking out loud or I will be forced to shove you out of this line entirely and I will not give you back your place.”_

_Okay, maybe still a little bit of a harridan._

_It was just -- it was fascinating, actually. _

_So far, Quentin had learned a few oddball facts -- you could have a pet, but only a pet that you’d had while you were living, and if multiple spirits had owned the same creature then there was a small civil court that would settle the dispute -- how? Quentin wondered. By throwing a ball if it was a dog and seeing who the dog returned it to? Seeing which pair of hands a cat did or did not attack? But what if the cat attacked when it was happy? What if the cat didn’t care? What if it was a fish and all it could do was blub about in its bowl?_

_A wash of homesickness flooded him. Alice and Julia would have wondered at these ridiculous questions, too._

_He liked the fact that there were different theology packages, at least. Sometime after the whole issue with Prometheus it looked like the different Hereafters had all decided to merge into one -- the one designed by Hades and run by Persephone. But just because it’d merged didn’t mean they’d eradicated beliefs -- a new resident of the dead could request a specific type of Hereafter at their admittance, based off their living beliefs._

_And, while the paperwork looked atrocious at first glance -- as complicated as any bureaucracy could make it -- it appeared that you could file for visas if someone you wanted to visit had picked a different afterlife than your own, which --_

_Oh._

_Oh, shit._

_Quentin’s hands trembled, just for a moment, making all the many pamphlets shiver and rattle; one fell to the floor, then another, and Q couldn’t even focus enough to see which they were, because -- where would he go? To his dad, or --_

_“Teddy,” he whispered. _

_Did it matter that Quentin was from Earth and his son was from Fillory? Maybe, maybe not. What mattered more, perhaps, was Quentin’s visceral fear at seeing him again. At having to explain what had happened, of having to remember Eliot with each glance at Teddy, their son. Would he see Arielle again if he went? He did miss her, he did, but --_

_He had gotten so_ used _to missing her, a whole lifetime ago._

_But Teddy... _

_Maybe you never got used to missing your own children._

_Quentin bowed his head, thinking, lost to another swirl of sudden anxiety, of pitch-darkness, of wonder. The pamphlets were so much cheap paper and ink in his arms, meaningless. Every once in a while Stephanie prodded his shoulder to get him moving, but for the most part, no matter how hard he’d worked with Penny-40 to let things go, to learn how to hold onto his life without being drowned by regret and misery, so that he didn’t wallow in what-ifs and longing, he -- he wasn’t strong enough to keep shaking off the ghosts. He wasn’t, and he didn’t want to be, not right now, not just then, no, absolutely not. So Quentin just -- remembered._

_He let himself remember what it was like to be alive._  
  


\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Shadowspire City  
\------------------------------------------------------------

The added benefit of heading into a city versus a small town -- which, if Eliot wasn’t so fucked up about Quentin, he would have thought to use in the first place as the perfect excuse -- was this: a town was more likely to notice a stranger and less likely to forget one.

A city didn’t give two fucks.

By the time he and Margo arrived they were disgusting and exhausted and cranky with it, but it was thankfully only just past noon. At the foot of the hellish slope they’d stumbled their way down they’d come across a fairly cheerful woman driving a wagon full of _pigs_, who’d taken one look at the two of them and begun clucking over them, insisting she give them a lift. “I’m for Shadowspire,” she said. “And you?”

Eliot didn’t much like the name -- too close to Blackspire for comfort. But Margo said, “That's the city over there, right? Wonderful! Why is it named that, do you think?”

“Well,” said the woman, looking puzzled but kind, “it’s because it grew up in the shadow of Whitespire, isn’t it? Seems fairly straightforward.”

Margo smiled at her, the expression strained. “Yes, of course. Not foreboding at all, either, I’m sure. Thank you for the offer, we’ll be glad to -- well. We’ll take you up on your generosity, at least. We’re heading to Shadowspire as well.”

They never would have made it without the woman’s assistance, the journey to Shadowspire far greater than it had seemed from atop the ridge. But the smell of the wagon even from a distance had nearly been enough for Margo and Eliot to take their chances outside at night, trees or no trees, especially once it became clear that they’d have to sit in back with a multitude of mud-spattered, squealing pigs. 

"Sorry, my dears," the cheerful pig farmer -- Mally -- told them. "Just not enough room up here on the bench with me. Plus, it's warmer back there! It's late enough in the season that it can get chilly if you're not walking, you know!"

"I might rather freeze to death," said Margo, not at all politely.

"Maybe," Mally grinned, "but you won't make it to Shadowspire before dusk, and there's not a lot of traffic on these roads. You'd better get in, love."

When Margo gave a heartfelt groan of annoyed capitulation and tried to frogmarch him into the back of the wagon, Eliot whined, feeling distinctly faint, "Oh, oh God. Margo, no! The smell of such swine gives me unbearable flashbacks to my childhood!”

“Everything in Fillory gives you unbearable flashbacks of your childhood, Eliot, I thought you got over this after that time you taught them how to _farm_.”

“Yes, but this is worse!” Eliot tried to convince her, but to no avail. 

Now, finally arrived in Shadowspire city, Whitespire looming nearby like a great, spiky moon trapped on the horizon, they stunk so fiercely that Eliot’s nose had stopped functioning all together, and even the unwashed, weary passerby in the city gave them a wider berth than they might otherwise. Well, fuck it all. The damage was done, and Eliot was barely keeping upright. For once it had nothing to do with how much he’d been drinking. 

“We need to get you lying down,” Margo said, eyeing him warily. “As tough as I am, there’s no way in _hell_ I’m going to be able to carry your beanpole ass, so don’t you dare pass out on me.”

“I would _never_,” Eliot protested, blinking away black spots in his vision.

Thankfully, the city was busy and thriving enough that the cobblestones were laid out fairly smooth, so Eliot’s cane didn’t catch on the edges nearly as badly as it could have. And there were taverns all throughout, too, but Margo picked nearly the first one they came across -- “The Horny Unicorn?” she mused, brow quirked. “Well, how can I _resist?_” -- and handed over some of the coins she’d had left over from her journey into the desert, several lifetimes and only a little while ago. 

“Oh, no,” said the boy overseeing the Horny Unicorn’s keys and ledger. “That’s way too much. That’s -- wow! Is that a real --”

Quickly, Margo curled her fingers back over the pieces in her palm and herded Eliot back outside, which he whined about but didn’t protest. “I suppose it was too much to ask that this be simple,” Margo huffed. “Damn. Apparently I am the owner of several old fashioned coins. How about I dump your ass next to a nice fountain while I try and find some antiques dealer or something? _Damn_. I should have realized Todd’s money looked weird.”

“Todd?” asked Eliot, listing with dizziness. 

Margo didn’t respond, though she did find a nice public fountain to leave Eliot by, and Eliot spent a hazy, exhausting half an hour waving his cane at erstwhile children, amusing himself as they scattered screaming from his theatrical scowl, only to come right back for him to do it again. He tried not to remember being in his sixties and doing something eerily similar to this foolishness in that little town he hadn’t let Margo drag him to.

Magic was weird. Time was weirder.

Also, _fuck_ Fillory.

Because Eliot, despite his best attempts, kept thinking about his own children and Arielle and Fen, but mostly: Quentin. 

For a very little while, Fillory had meant something to Eliot all on its own -- something that he could have, and love, and use to make himself into a better person than he ever had been. He had willingly accepted the isolation of being High King, of marrying for convenience rather than love and sex, and it had _meant something_. Something powerful and important. But now -- now when he looked up and down the streets all he saw was Quentin, who had loved Fillory more than anyone else, and suffered unbearably for it.

Oh, how Quentin would have thrilled to see these shops, even more outlandish than they had been centuries ago -- selling charms and bewitched scales, brooms that levitated and did your sweeping for you, centaurs in the streets haggling with talking animals for intricately tooled satchels whose interiors were twice the size as the exterior dimensions suggested. 

Yes. Quentin would have fucking _loved_ this.

So, of course, Eliot hated all of it on reflex.

“_Damn_,” said Margo later, after she’d gotten proper coinage and paid for board, a platter of cold sausage and cheese, and two piping hot baths. She was examining the sign hanging from the front of the inn as the horizon lit up hot pink and orange in preparation for dusk. Their rented room had a window facing the street, on level with the creaking plank of wood denoting its name. Margo leaned further out the window and called back, “That is one well-hung unicorn!”

“I think you’re fucking enough magical creatures,” Eliot reminded her. 

“I _am_ a fucking magical creature, thank you very much,” Margo sniffed, and then came back into the room to fuss over Eliot, which he enjoyed because he was _tired_, and he was sad and hateful and hungry and missing Q like someone had broken open his sternum, cracked aside his ribs, and reached inside him to take out everything that had ever been worth having at all. 

“God,” Eliot mourned. “I’m feeling maudlin. Bambi, tell me there is booze here, or at least a decent simulacrum. I need to get wasted and my flask isn’t going to cut it.”

Margo patted him on the knee and winked. “I’ll see what I can find.”  


\----

  
Margo found enough booze to keep them in well past noon the next day, and the rest of the daylit hours were spent eating and sleeping, because Margo was worried about Eliot’s complexion. “You look a bit like a corpse,” she said dryly when Eliot gave a token protest. “And trust me, I’ve seen way more of those than I’d like in recent years. So you just lay back, darling, and think of -- England.”

The last half of that sentence was said on a bit of a hitching wheeze, as Margo realized how badly her joke was going to land. Lay back and think of -- who else?

Eliot waited until she went down to the main floor of the inn, no doubt seeking imbecilic passerby who wouldn’t think twice about spilling state secrets to someone as beautiful and charming as her, and then he -- he _did_ think about him. Quentin. Thought about his taste and his smell, how his hand had felt spread out over Eliot’s chest when he rode him; how Quentin gasped each time Eliot pressed inside, how he’d liked it from behind, the front, up against a wall, _anywhere_.

They hadn’t been picky.

They’d had all the time in the world, once, to not be picky.

Eliot thought about Quentin’s fingers twisting in his hair, or slipping oil-slick inside his body, pressing him open while his mouth sucked Eliot’s cock down, the way it felt to have that stocky, heavy body pressing his thighs wide with Quentin burying his face in Eliot’s chest like it was too much to bear to feel this _connected_, all too much, and --

Eliot was crying.

Margo came back in and said, “Oh, _honey_. Peaches?”

“And plums,” Eliot sighed, weary to the bone. He held his arms out and Margo came in and curled up with him, let him hold her. “I know I’ve had my share of paramours that I -- I was sure I wouldn’t get over --”

Margo made a distressed noise, like she wished to reprimand him before he could even finish, but he spoke over her, admitting, “-- and I was wrong about them, obviously. And maybe I’ll be wrong about this, too, but -- Bambi, how do you get over someone you spent a lifetime loving? _How_. There’s fucking _opium in the air_ and I’m still -- I’m still _this fucked up_.”

“Well…”

Eliot shook his head, once, sharp and too honest. Consolation wasn’t what he wanted, not right now. He needed to unburden himself, to give up this broken truth festering at the core of him, because if he didn’t then he thought it might kill him, slow and sure. 

So he choked out: “I died loving him. He died not -- not knowing how much he meant to me, not knowing --”

This time, Margo did interrupt him. “El. _Eliot_, wait, stop just --” she laid her hand over his mouth, leaned up and over him to stare down at him fiercely, heartbreak making her mouth soft and sullen, eyes bright and vicious, “-- there’s no way he didn’t know. Coldwater could be obtuse, I’ll give you that. Part of his charm. But -- there’s no way he didn’t know, El. You didn’t -- you didn’t see him, all right? At the end, when --”

“Neither did you,” Eliot mumbled against her palm. “You were rather busy from what you’ve told me.”

Her hand clamped harder against his mouth. It smelled sort of sweaty and salty; he really hoped that if she’d found someone -- or a unicorn, who knew -- to jack off for information or fun or both, she’d managed to wash her hands after.

She rolled her eyes at him. “I certainly saw more than _you_,” she protested. “And it wasn’t much a secret how he was acting, you know the children we kept company with -- outrageous gossips, all of them, with too many opinions and not enough sense. _Everyone_ was wondering what was up with him. Because as soon as he knew you were still alive, he -- changed. Scared Julia, and even Penny and Kady with how he acted -- there was no fear in him. The monster could have snapped his neck and it wouldn’t have mattered, not if it meant losing _you_.”

To his shame, Eliot realized he was shaking.

Margo moved her hand, finally, stroked her fingers through Eliot’s too-long curls. Tucked a strand behind his ear and kissed his forehead. “He protected you. Fiercely, fully, with everything he had -- you don’t just do that for unrequited love, okay? He _knew_.”

“Did he?” Eliot choked out.

“What was it you told him?” Margo asked gently. “What were the words you chose, to let him know you were still in there, still alive?”

_(-- Fifty years, who gets proof of concept like that? Peaches and plums, motherfucker. --)_

“He knew,” she whispered, still stroking his hair. “Oh, sweetheart. You told him, I promise. He _knew_.”

Eliot cried until he fell asleep, and then he woke and it was morning, and it was time to get his shit together. Time to get Margo’s kingdom back, since just because his heart had stopped when Quentin’s did didn’t mean the world followed suit. So he -- he put his boots on, and rinsed his face and magicked his teeth clean, breathing deep the opium-laced air like it could somehow soothe this perpetual, nagging ache of misery.

When Margo asked, “You ready to set this city on fire?” Eliot had managed to erect as many defenses as he could possibly cobble together, gossamer and grief-choked though they were. But they were enough to cling to normalcy. To pretend, to blow a kiss at her and say, as defiantly as he knew how: “They’ll never know what hit them.”


	4. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter might get a little rough, so... national suicide prevention hotline: 1-800-273-8255 available 24 hours everyday.

  
  
  


****

#### CHAPTER THREE

****

Underworld Meadows  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_There were a few pamphlets about grief. _

_Quentin had hunted through the remnants still in his hands as soon as he’d gotten as twisted up and morose as he could possibly get, thinking about -- about the beauty of all life, of holding a grandchild in his old, liver-spotted arms, of Eliot’s laughter hazy in the morning light, sleep-softened and fond. Too much to stomach, even now. So he’d shuffled through the glossy folds until he found a few likely ones, that might tell Quentin how long he could expect to feel like this, a live-wire sparking and hissing._

_He expected to feel soothed, that frantic quiver in his soul calming down to the placid peace he’d felt while reclined on Penny-40’s leather couch, talking about how cathartic it had been to destroy his dad’s model planes, teaching a monster how humans handled grief and pain and sorrow so that it became an ache that didn’t burn; a memory that didn’t hobble._

_But browsing through the pamphlets didn’t make him feel better._

Consider it akin to PTSD, _one of them read_, after all, you’ve been through a great trauma called life! Now that you have left it behind you may find yourself suffering from the occasional bout of remembrance, an old wound deep within your psyche that will intermittently act up. This is perfectly normal! In the Hereafter we have everything for your new needs, including esteemed guides to help you navigate past such pain. Try remembering this instead -- you deserve to leave it all behind!

_Blah, blah, fucking blah. _

_What a joke. As if life wasn’t actually worth living, like it was just the hard labor you had to put in to get to the other side, the real stuff. It -- kind of pissed Quentin off to read that, actually. For someone who’d had suicidal urges, who had to_ fight _just to believe that life was worthwhile sometimes: those shameful and hateful moments when he was at his lowest, trapped by depression, spiraling ever downward and knowing that it was happening and not being able to do anything, not being able to do anything but cling onto the ghost of a belief with his fucking fingernails…_

_Jesus. There had been times when all he’d wanted was to let go and surrender and stop feeling so fucking awful, to just stop all of it, everything, and be free; from disappointment, from anxiety, from the crushing weight of every expectation he failed to meet, or that the_ world_ fucking failed to meet, constantly letting him down --_

Is this it? Is this all there is? What’s the fucking point?

_Quentin had fought and fought and fought to keep from giving up; to keep himself from really believing that dying was better than being alive, and now -- now this. This fucking bullshit. _

_Fuck._

_Just -- fuck!_

_Groaning, he rubbed at his temples, pamphlets fluttering around his face as he tried not to crack his own damned teeth with how hard he was grinding them. What was it about the Underworld, he wondered, that made people forget the value of living? Jesus. _

_At least this time, the anger had been productive. He was down to only fifteen pamphlets tucked into his pockets, now, speed-reading as thoroughly as he knew how, trying to find something, anything that would make him feel better. There had been a lot about adjusting, about further grief-counseling, about reconnecting with families and friends and also about what to do when you didn’t want any of that at all. _

_The line had moved again, first one soul, then another, then four more. The clerk behind the desk coming ever closer, and -- and Quentin wasn’t all that surprised by now to find himself dreading his arrival at the front of it._

_Somehow, before Quentin first arrived here in the Meadows, he had gotten it into his head -- likely from Penny-40’s new, rather blasé response to just about freaking everything -- that being dead meant feeling less… alive. It meant the sharp edges smoothed over, the deep darkness drained, and that the burning pit at the bottom of his stomach, impatient to just_ get on with it, _would get smothered. He would become as zen and chill and at peace as a dead thing could be._

_For some reason, considering his panic and rage at the stupid grief pamphlets and their belittlement of living, that didn’t seem to be happening. Maybe it just takes a while, he reasoned. The pamphlet claimed that PTSD from living was a thing you could get over with time. And in the Hereafter, all you really had was endless, endless time._

_Quentin tried to swallow around the sick, sour feeling in his mouth at the thought, the twisting of his innards. _

_Was it normal for Quentin to have moved on so quickly? He remembered the slip of paper crowded with his life, tucked and folded up into a pocket so he couldn’t lose it. That was -- a lot of text. A lot of living. Plenty of regrets. How was it possible that after only a handful of sessions Quentin had been ready to just -- let it all go? Even Penny-40 had fought his death at first. Raging and furious and desperate to get back -- to life, to love, to every shit thing that might happen because he’d thought it was worth it, if only he had a chance to help try and make it better._

_Quentin... hadn’t done the same. He hadn’t even tried._

_So, what then? Was he broken here, like this, just as he’d been fucked up all through life?_

_A bitter twist curled his mouth, because that seemed likely. But Quentin really thought he’d been alright with his death, or as okay as he could be. Thought he’d accepted it, really and truly, and considering that he’d been given a metro card and grief counseling and the go-ahead, Penny-40 must have thought so too, but -- since when had counseling ever done much for him save help tidy up the superficial? A stop gap, a way to settle the roiling depression before it rolled him under once again._

_It was only ever magic that had seemed to heal him, and look where_ that _had gotten him. _

_So maybe..._

_Maybe it hadn’t been acceptance, so much as -- as giving up? That rung true, in a way that sent an all too familiar sick rush through him, guilt and misery and self-flagellation. Fuck, fuck had Quentin really done that? How? Was it all that time with the monster, all those moments where he’d been certain he’d die, was going to die, wanted to die rather than deal with one more awful thing -- in a way Quentin had already done his time grieving, denying, bargaining, being angry, so that when the actual moment came it was almost easy, seemed right, seemed like a perfect choice._

_No wonder he hadn’t hesitated when the judgement call had come -- his life, or the end of the world. _

_He had asked Penny-40 about that, hadn’t he? About whether he had -- had given up, whether his suicidal tendencies had led him to his final choice, if Quentin had wanted death enough to seek it out, rather than truly made a heroic sacrifice. And Penny had rebuffed that idea, given Quentin a bonfire in the night, his friends singing, honoring him, and asked Quentin if he’d really wanted to leave all of them behind, if he’d chosen death for his own sake, or for theirs, and --_

_Quentin wished it was as simple as that._

_Because no, maybe he hadn’t been seeking death, but Quentin had most certainly accepted it’s inevitable embrace well before it had even happened. Had done a minor mending, and now he was in the Hereafter, about to tackle what would no doubt be a massive mending, because the way his heart was broken wasn’t any easy fix. He wished it was. Wished he didn’t feel like this, raw and hurting. He had always thought that death would be peace, that it would be a relief to stop thinking and having emotions and --_

_Why the fuck had Penny-40 given him a metrocard? _

_Quentin wasn’t okay. He wasn’t anywhere near okay._

_Maybe Penny-40 and his coworkers tried to cut down on the pileup of cases by shuttling them all through early, before they had a chance to rethink it. Maybe accepting that you were dead wasn’t the same as accepting you weren’t alive anymore? Perhaps it was just the first stage. Quentin knew a thing or two about the so-called stages of grief, and maybe -- maybe there were additional levels in the Afterlife that he would reach -- after acceptance, he’d eventually hit… complacency?_

_Which actually sounded terrible?_

_If Quentin had been content to be complacent then he wouldn’t have been so fucking depressed for most of his life, now would he? God, just -- fuck this. Fuck all of this, why -- _

_These stupid, stupid lines! All this indefinite time without a single clock in view, shuffling slowly along, with nothing to occupy yourself save existential questions. How was he meant to survive this? Maybe that slip of paper had been a lie, some kind of trick and the suggested destination had only been one part of an equation that equaled hell. Because this, surely this was it, pop culture had it right all along and the DMV was hell on earth and hell afterward, too, and Quentin was trapped in a public transportation hub for eternity, miserable and hurting and so, so fucking --_  
  


\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Shadowspire City  
\------------------------------------------------------------

By the end of the day no fires had been set that hadn’t then been put out, and Eliot and Margo were no closer to finding out why in all the hells Whitespire was floating in the sky and three hundred years had come and gone without them. Evening found them in the busy pub area of the tavern, seated at a rough-hewn wood table and shifting uncomfortably in rickety chairs as they observed the humorous and appalling behavior of the other patrons. 

“I do keep seeing all these weird, not-so-secret carvings of trees, though,” Margo said around a mouthful of a turkey leg. Grease glittered on her chin and the side of her nose. 

“I also saw those,” Eliot sighed, drawing his arm up and over his eyes as if to block out the futility of it all. “They looked remarkably like the ones we saw carved in that hideous little clearing where we went _camping_. They’re all over this city. Crude, some of them old, others new. Definitely not something from _our_ day. Hm. You don’t think it’s the work of a delinquent, do you? Or some Fillorian Banksy, or...”

“Did you or did you _not_ just say that some of them look old?”

Eliot let his arm slide down so he could give Margo a properly wounded look. “Well, I’m hardly an _expert_, now am I?”

“Also,” said Margo, entirely unforgiving, “there’s the little matter of how that hideous clearing was lit up with _god power_ thanks to those weird little carvings.”

“We can’t know for sure,” cautioned Eliot. He didn’t bother to try very hard to be convincing though, mostly because he felt as certain as Margo that the carvings had been the conduit for all that power. But Eliot was far from pleased at the idea of tangling with yet another god. He felt he could be allowed some dragging of the heels in this regard.

“You’d think they’d work on making the design prettier,” Margo complained. “If we have to investigate weird markings, I’d at least prefer them to be pleasing to the eye, wouldn’t you? This goddess has no taste; obviously she needs a better PR manager.”

“Mm, I’m sure you could teach her a thing or twelve.”

They spent the remainder of dinner pooling their finds, realizing with frustration that no one they’d spoken to seemed to know anything of value about this Dark Usurper. “They call him the Immortal,” Margo said with poorly veiled disgust, ticking off points on her fingertips, “and the Dark Lord, and the Dark King, and just -- how much more obvious do you need to be? The fuck’s wrong with them? Why do they seem _content_ with this bullshit?”

“Apparently he demands a tithe of nubile young men every year,” Eliot murmured. “Sounds like orgies and dark magic to _me_. Also, maybe like a few Thursday nights in my very, _very_ early college days.”

“Ooh, tell me _more_,” Margo deadpanned.

It was, in fact, more than a little disconcerting that no one ever seemed to have any form of speculation about Fillory’s new -- well, maybe not _new_; Margo had, apparently, spoken to one particularly creaky old woman who had intimated that the Dark King was as glorious and awe-inspiring as he’d been when she was a little girl -- ruler, let alone anything _negative_ to say about his policies. Eliot remembered, with unfortunate violence, the horror show that had been the election for new High King, and also the coups, and that one time he’d gotten married to the man who’d tried to _kill him_ and _take over his kingdom_. 

Either this Dark Lord was really doing something right, or something wildly fucked up was afoot.

“Loyalty test,” Margo sighed quietly in their room that night, the two of them tangled up in conjured blankets rather than risk the scratchy, possibly diseased bedding the tavern had to offer. “Todd was so… scared. And… I wonder…”

Eliot rather wondered, too: “Seriously, what the hell has Todd to do with this? I thought we left him behind on Earth.”

Margo’s snoring was the only answer, so Eliot let it lull him, let it block out memories and worries and longings, trying not to think about the too-wide smiles everyone donned, as soon as he’d asked about the Dark King, nor the pleasantly puzzled expressions when he’d attempted to point out the tree sigils. Tried not to think too hard on the way so much of what they’d been told had sounded like party lines, and whether or not he needed to worry about someone reporting Margo and his questioning to the secret police.

And then he heard the _sound_.

Or rather, the lack of.

Carefully, groggy with exhaustion and the way sleep had almost pulled him under, Eliot disentangled his limbs from Margo’s and went to peek through the window. He rather wished he hadn’t. Outside, on the wide streets, nothing stirred save shadows, lumbering and slow, swinging too long arms and heavy heads to and fro, seeking, seeking…

They were the same shadow creatures from his and Margo’s time in the forest. Likely, they had been out the night before as well, but Eliot had been well and truly knocked on his ass between grief and booze and hadn’t awoken. God, it seemed as if Fillory was always in trouble of some sort, and for whatever stupid, fucked up reason, it was apparently Eliot and Margo’s cosmic duty to fix it.

“Fuck this place,” Eliot whined, very quietly, and pressed his hands to his brow, digging the heels into his eye sockets. He went back to bed.

\--

The following day they stuck together, wandering through the streets.

Eliot didn’t need to mention his worries about a secret police to Margo; he saw the same concerns in the tightness about her eyes. Some sort of KGB or Gestapo seemed just right for a guy who went by _The Dark Immortal_, which was the rather florid moniker one particularly garrulous badger used. She’d done so with such exuberance and fanfare that the emotion couldn’t be anything _but_ fake. 

“Wow,” Margo said in a low tone afterward, brows high and face twisted with dry humor. “That sounds like a title for the type of filthy romantic drivel Alice would keep hidden in her bedside drawer to fap off to.”

Eliot had choked on laughter, but hadn’t bothered to deny the accusation or come up with a witty rejoinder. Though he had managed sleep eventually, it had been disjointed, broken up with dark dreams he couldn’t remember, leaving him instead with a twisted pit of anxiety weighing down his chest and blocking up his lungs, causing him to gasp for breath. Everything ached; his heart more than most. But still he trudged alongside Margo, both of them on the lookout for tails, for tracking spells, for hints of shadows. 

“Darling, just because we haven’t noticed anyone watching us doesn’t mean they _aren’t_. Perhaps tact is still called for,” Eliot tried to suggest when Margo was having it out with a middle-aged florist. But no one ever spoke about the tree carvings, pretending like they didn’t exist, no matter how tactful Eliot’s line of questioning managed to be, and apparently this didn’t change even when Margo ignored Eliot’s helpful suggestion and pointed at one such sigil with a frantic, sharply nailed finger and wailed, “HELLO, IT IS RIGHT THE FUCK THERE! LITERALLY RIGHT THERE ON YOUR WALL HALF-HIDDEN BY A BUSH OF -- WHAT ARE THOSE?” 

“Fillorian Naked Bottom Roses,” said the Fillorian, looking serene about the weird, flesh-colored flowers that appeared to be the type of rose hybrids that got their jollies off by pretending to be a bare butt. “Would you like some? I can clip a bouquet for you if you like --”

Needless to say, Eliot had steered Margo away before she could set _another_ fire. 

“Maybe I should start flashing my wrists around,” Margo grumbled back at the tavern that night. The low light from the guttering oil lamps made the space seem secretive, safe, even with strangers stinking of ale and the sweat of a long day pressing in all around. “It certainly got Todd turned around fast enough.”

“Who,” Eliot asked, “is _Todd_.”

“The pumpkin guy,” Margo said with a haughty sniff. “He was a Todd if there ever was one.”

Eliot looked at her, charmed and bewildered, and offered: “If we’re any more blatant we’ll probably find ourselves in shackles before morning. Even if we haven’t _seen_ a secret police, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.” He thought, suddenly, of the shadows crawling over the city during the dark, nary a Fillorian soul in sight. A shiver ran through him. 

“We’re not making any headway! Do you have any better suggestions? Because please,” Margo said, lethally quiet and precise, “by all means, share with the class. No? I didn’t think so. God, fuck this! There aren’t even any god damned rabbits around to send a message back to Earth for reinforcements, and I’m tired of wearing the same clothes, and I want my castle, and I -- I need --” her breath hitched, the words crumpling up in her throat so that she had to swallow them, grimacing.

_I need Josh_, Eliot imagined she was going to say.

They still hadn’t found out anything about Josh and Fen, and the uncertainty was obviously taking its toll on Margo. Eliot felt bad, wincing with it, because he’d hardly thought about how much she must be clawing at her own emotions, tamping them down to keep her mask in place. Eliot _knew_ her, he was aware of the depth of emotion she buried. He just… hadn’t been paying attention. It felt like his innards had all been blanketed in a dense shroud, gray and melancholy, something Gothic no doubt. The energy it took to lift it, to try and tuck it aside to make room for worry and care and concern for other people, was not energy Eliot was in much supply of. 

If he were a better person, a better friend…well, he needed to at least try.

“I’m sorry, Bambi,” Eliot murmured, voice nearly lost to a round of raunchy singing going on by the taps. “We’ll -- we’ll find something, eventually. But you won’t help either of them if you get the two of us arrested by announcing yourself like that. There’s too much going on and we don’t know shit about any of it.”

“I hate this,” Margo hissed, grasping at Eliot’s hand and holding on far too tightly.

“I know,” Eliot murmured, clinging back.

\--

Eliot sent Margo up to the room alone once she’d grown tired, staying down in the pub and nursing a tankard of terrible, warm ale as he waited and watched. But no one said anything. They simply drank, sang, ate and conversed, and then between one sleepy blink of his eyes and the next, the tavern was emptied, everyone filing out without explanation, without panic, without cause.

“Hey,” said Eliot to the barkeep. “Closing time?”

The barkeep had blinked at him, stroked the thick fur at her throat, and said: “You got a room here?”

“I happen to, yes.”

“Then nah. You’ve a bit of time, still.”

So Eliot nodded, and pretended to drink the swill, and had nearly fallen asleep in his tankard. Eventually the barkeep took it from him and said, “_Now_ it’s closing time. To bed with you, lad.”

“Oh.” Eliot, very nearly, forgot what he’d been staying up for. 

Sleep sounded wonderful, like the only kindness in a hard world, that momentary reprieve of oblivion. Eager for it, Eliot slipped off his stool with a graceful stagger, straightened his dirtied clothes as best he could, and started toward the stairs. It was only when he was halfway across the floor that he remembered, stopping with a lurch and staring at the door that led to the street, which was securely shut.

Again, it was the lack of noise that caught at his attention.

No street, let alone a city street, should be so _quiet_. 

“Well,” said Eliot, clearing his throat theatrically so as to catch the barkeep’s attention. He rolled his hand toward the door showily, saying, “I suppose I’m not ready for bed _just_ yet. Perhaps… another tavern will be open farther down the street? I’ll just…”

He took a step toward the door.

“I’ll break your legs if you try opening that door, lad,” the barkeep said, not unkindly. “You’re sloshed if you think that’s a good idea. Go to bed.”

Eliot took another step toward the door, unease prickling up his spine at the casual threat.

“Don’t.”

“Why?” Eliot asked, but he didn’t look at the barkeep to see the expression on her ursine face. Maybe he should have, but now that he was so near the door he couldn’t look away from it. Closer and closer it came, as though inevitable. The rough grain of the carved wood door, the dark iron of its drawn bolt; it seemed to take up the whole world. 

There were shadows beyond that door, he knew. Creatures that likely wanted to hurt him, a mystery that might devour him whole. Walking toward it felt not unlike stepping up to a precipice, a sheer drop that you _knew_ existed just out of sight, the thrill and fear of it crawling across your skin as you came nearer and nearer to the lip of it, that teetering edge that might pull you over and _down_ at any moment...

“You _know_ why.”

“No, I really don’t,” Eliot said with a vicious little laugh. “We keep asking, but no one is _answering_. I’m getting tired of it. And tired of the terrible beer. Is it really so much to ask that Fillory learn how to make some decent champagne? Tell me why I shouldn’t go out there.”

The barkeep answered: “Because you’ll break your lover’s heart.”

And Eliot immediately stiffened, which was -- so _stupid_. It was absolutely rubbish that those words could affect him so, because the only lover he’d had in recent years was Quentin, and Quentin wasn’t here any longer. Was gone, far beyond reach, and had no heart left to break. It was _Eliot’s_ heart that kept breaking, over and over again, with every reminder, every breath. And he knew it would get easier -- it _had_ to get easier.

But it wasn’t an easy thing yet.

No, it was still the worst burden he’d ever had to bear, being left behind. And so just that one word -- _lover_ \-- was enough to shatter his heart and lodge the broken shards in his throat, sharp and jagged, so that he felt like one wrong move would be enough to slice him to ribbons. He almost wanted it, that pain and the hope of it being enough. Instead, he stilled where he stood a few bare feet from the door, hand outstretched like he’d been going to open it. 

Which he had absolutely been about to do, he realized; he was willing to risk the dark and the shadows because he was _tired_ of this bullshit quest, so tired of hurting all the time, years and years and _years_ of it building up to too much, _too much_. 

“You don’t --”

“That pretty lady you’re with,” the barkeep said, tone soothing, like she was trying to talk him down off the ledge. “Can’t just go and leave her like this, yeah? Go on up to your room, go be with your love. Don’t break her heart, lad.”

Eliot grit his teeth. 

_Margo_.

She was why he was here, in this world, in this Inn, horribly sober for all that he’d nursed the multiverse’s worst lager in existence the entire night, tired and irritable and facing down a literal bear of a barkeep. She was why he was willing to take risks, threatening to walk out that door into the unknown. 

But Margo was also why he couldn’t give in; why he had to keep _trying_. 

“Why can’t I go outside?” Eliot asked, but his voice was worn, threadbare. He closed his eyes, swaying where he stood, and dropped his arm. “Why would it break her heart?”

“You _know_ why. Stop making me repeat myself!”

Eliot pursed his mouth, then tried: “I’m loyal.”

The barkeep snorted, a heavy sound. “Aren’t we all,” she said dryly. “Not that they’d care either way, as you’d be well aware of if you weren’t drunk off your arse. Now get to bed before I have to over there and haul you up myself. I promise you won’t enjoy it, lad.”

He wanted to verify whether that _they_ meant the shadows or something else, and also perhaps who Eliot had just said he was loyal to: the Dark Lord? Some other player they had yet to meet? But he could tell by the warning growl in the barkeep’s low voice that her threat wasn’t an idle one. 

Sighing, Eliot turned, gave the barkeep one annoyed glower, and drawled, “I suppose I should make some joke about how I’ve been manhandled by a bear once or twice, and enjoyed it.”

She bared her teeth. “Have you now?”

“No,” Eliot smirked. “_I_ was the one doing the manhandling. Good night.”

The barkeep laughed, and Eliot felt -- almost -- a little better for it. A single, fragile little flame of comfort to warm him for a moment as he went up to their rented room.

Once there, the comfort fled as soon as he looked out the window and saw the streets were indeed full of shadows. The flickering gaslight cast them into grotesque relief, some slow-moving, seething miasma. How many of them existed? The barkeep had acted as though the shadows outside the door were a given, a fact of knowledge that Eliot should _know_. If that were so, then what did it mean that there were shadows in the woods so far away from Shadowspire City? Did they roam the whole of Fillory? That would be -- be _immense_, the level of power a spell of that caliber would need…

Eliot couldn’t help but wonder if _they_ were the secret police, and if so exactly how it worked -- they seemed barely cognizant, and only out and about during the darkest hours. It could hardly be worth keeping them in employ, unless they were merely a scare tactic -- but again, the level of power a spell like this would need, with so _many_ of the damned things, implied something more nefarious.

Surely there was some point to them that Eliot had yet to discover.

Unfortunately, Eliot was self-aware enough to realize that they likely _would_ discover the point sooner or later, and most likely to their deep regret. He supposed it could wait until morning. Weary, heart-sick, Eliot shed his coat and scarf, his boots, and crawled into the furs to join Margo: warm, alive, and still here. 

He listened to the beat of her heart, trying to memorize the rhythm, and matched the rise and fall of her chest in an attempt to relearn how to breathe through the pain, to keep on going.

\--

In the morning, Margo and Eliot again kept close to each other.

“Let’s just… listen,” Eliot suggested in the early hours, and though Margo had given him a _look_, ever impatient to conquer whatever stood in her way, she pursed her lips and kept quiet as they walked the city streets, stopping in shops while Eliot made quietly scathing banter with merchants and fellow shoppers alike. It didn’t get them any closer to answers for their questions -- who was this new goddess? Why were there poorly drawn trees everywhere? Why wouldn’t anyone talk about them? Who was the Dark Lord and where had he come from and what the _flying fuck_ had happened in the last three hundred years? Why couldn’t anyone go out safely at night without the promise of heartbreak?

Still, Eliot kept trying while Margo vibrated more and more with irritation, until around noon when Eliot was just thinking about breaking for lunch and then letting Margo loose on the city, a beggar woman on a street corner caught his eye. 

“Well if this isn’t quaint,” Eliot breathed, fingers tightening hard around his ornate cane.

“What?”

Eliot tossed his head in the old woman’s direction. She wore a tattered gray dress and had a dirty cloth wrapped around her eyes. Blind, maybe, or at least giving the appearance of it. There was a roughly-hewn wooden bowl settled on the ground before her bent knees, but she only sat there as Fillorians moved past, never seeming to notice her. 

It was eerie, making all the fine hairs on Eliot’s body stand on end; the way she sat, silent and still, with only the long, loose spirals of her gray hair moving gently in the breeze. 

She was obviously waiting.

“This is Fillory,” Eliot said, in tones of deep disgust. “You _know_ what it’s like. Look at her. She’s just -- just _waiting_ to be a helpful quest creature to anyone foolish enough to spare her a pittance. Ugh. This world. So many damned quests, and you know that only Q --”

His voice broke off.

Margo went soft beside him, the rage that had kept her sharply angled and aggressive easing up. She was all slow, sad breathing and melting gentleness at his side, a hand pressed carefully to his forearm. Clearing her throat, she said, “Yeah, you’re right -- that nerd would have been all over this. Strange tastes, our Q had.”

“We had a bit of trouble, once, in our thirties,” Eliot told her. His voice sounded faint, even to his own ears, as if cast out from a great distance -- a pebble thrown down the chasm of years and years, the dark water at its bottom too far to hear the resultant splash clearly. “Q just couldn’t resist helping this old man whose donkey cart had broken down in a muddy track. Wound up having to -- to uh --”

He shook his head, took a deep breath, and said as cheerfully as he could, though Margo would know it false, the way it came off too sharp and brittle by half. “Well, not that it matters! You don’t need details of my sordid past, hm, Bambi? This time we _are_ on a quest. Arthur.”

“If you keep calling me Arthur,” Margo replied sweetly, “I’ll be forced to carve your innards out with a rusty spoon.”

“The _blood lust_ on you, darling, it’s practically _savage_,” Eliot mourned. 

They moved down the street toward the quest creature masked as an old beggar woman. Thankfully, Margo didn’t press for details of Eliot’s past, of the ridiculous journey he and Quentin had made to a little village near Chantry Bore. That was before Arielle had died, and it had been a little like a vacation, with the lovely and pragmatic Arielle firmly informing the two men in her life: “That puzzle isn’t going anywhere, and a few days gallivanting about won’t cause the sky to fall. Not at this time of year, anyway. Go on, get going! Teddy and I are going to visit my parents, and the two of _you_ are going to enjoy your holiday.”

“There _are_ rules about this sort of thing,” Q had muttered, awkward and angry, and Eliot had turned sharply on a heel, arms crossed, to drawl scathingly, “Yes, well perhaps you should have _remembered_ the rules and the way this blighted world _works_ before insisting we help that creepy old man who was far, _far_ too enamored of his donkey. Believe you me, I know the signs, I grew up in --”

“Indiana, yes, I _know_,” Quentin huffed, rolling his eyes. “I’m sorry, okay? Do you need me to shout it from the highest hill? The tallest tree top? Should I magic it up in the sky in big, sparkling letters? Maybe I can take up needle point and sew it into a pillow for you, huh? I’m _sorry_ that I helped a defenseless old --”

“I can think of a few ways you might apologize,” Arielle cut in dryly, “And it’s bound to be far louder and more rambunctious than Teddy needs to hear from his fathers. So _go_.”

She’d been right, of course. The first round of angry sex had startled an entire lake full of naiads into enthusiastic applause when they’d barely been a few hours into their ridiculous quest, and Eliot had very nearly accidentally agreed to become a sex slave, which had caused Quentin to explode a beaver -- _ha!_ \-- and make a daring escape with Eliot in tow. _That_, of course, had caused Eliot to be the one offering up apology sex, but only after their second, third, and _fourth_ round of angry sex, because Eliot, by that point, was enjoying it far too much to stop, and, well…

If it didn’t hurt so much, the wound still so fresh and sharp, then the memories would have been pleasant.

Luckily, before he could quite fall farther into the grips of agonized memory, Margo and he were standing before the old woman, who smelled rather pleasantly of tree sap and fire. Odd combo, but it worked, Eliot supposed, if one liked to be reminded of camping. He peered down at the little wooden bowl and wasn’t at all surprised to see a roughly hewn -- though at least this time, fairly _neat_ and rather intricate -- sigil of a tree within a circle at the bottom of it. 

“All right, let’s get this over with,” Eliot sighed pointedly. “Margo, pay the creature.”

“Rude,” said the beggar woman, a little mocking smile quirking her lips. She reached up with gnarled hands and slipped the dirty cloth up over her forehead. Her eyes were sleepy looking, half-lidded and a piercing blue. Definitely not blind, then.

“Save it for someone who cares,” Margo sniffed, flicking a single coin into the shallow wooden bowl. “Go on then, we know how this goes. What hideously droll deeds are we meant to be performing now, hm? Slay a dragon? Unite all of Briton? Is Excalibur lying around somewhere, since I am, apparently, the Once and Future High King.”

The woman laughed, and there was something surprisingly fond in it. Something familiar, too, though Eliot couldn’t exactly place it. And the recent wash of painful memories had him feeling agitated, all chaotic energy, a pain that wanted to leap out of his hands in bursts of hot, destructive magic, in bitten off words and cruel quips. He didn’t have patience just then, not for any of it, so he merely sniffed, fiddled with the cuff of his sleeve, and leaned heavily on his cane, waiting for the old beast to get on with it.

“I see you’re in a hurry,” she said, voice creaking and soft. “Well, then I won’t keep you. I’m even more impatient to see the end of this venture than _you_, if you’d believe it.”

“Ugh,” muttered Margo. “I’d believe it more if you’d get _on_ with it.” 

A hand lifted and pointed down the street. “Sure. Go that way. You’ll know it when you see it.” 

“Those are, without doubt, the _worst_ directions I have ever been given,” Margo protested. “What do you _mean_ go that way? We’ve gone that way before! We’ve been up and down all these horrid streets for days now!”

“Have a little faith, Margo,” said the creature, and it was a testament to the weirdness of Fillory and their lives that Margo only rolled her eyes at her name being known. For his part, Eliot merely sighed wearily. The anger had seeped from him as quickly as it had pooled, leaving him empty and hollow, tired again all over and wishing he could sleep for a few centuries. Maybe by the end of that kind of nap he’d wake up and nothing would hurt as bad; or maybe they’d at least finally find someone willing to speak plainly to them. 

“Faith’s never done anything for me,” Margo argued back, grit in her voice. 

The old woman smiled, a little sadly. But the only thing she had to offer up was: “Find the older parts of the city. What was lost may yet be found again.” Then, between one blink and the next she was gone, as if she’d never been there at all. 

“I hate this fucking world,” Eliot sighed.

\------------

Underworld Meadows  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_The line shuffled forward, one more soul moving on._

Get your shit together, Coldwater, _he told himself, not at all surprised that the voice sounded in part like Julia and in part like Eliot, a comfort and a reprimand all in one._ You just have to outlast this line, you just have to wait out the waiting and then you’ll be in a better place, yeah? You can do this, you can...

_Oh god, he absolutely couldn’t do this._

_Half-desperate for distraction, he scrabbled through the pamphlets in his pockets, looking, seeking something, anything to occupy his mind, to let him avoid madness for a time -- and noticing all at once and with a shock that there was a small spell in place, one that he almost didn’t recognize because he hadn’t been thinking about magic at all here, too swamped with memories, with grief, with uncertainty. _

_“The fuck is this?” he wondered, breathless with anxiety and surprise._

_Behind him, Stephanie said, “Oh, good. I thought you were going to hyperventilate, which, you know -- kind of weird when we don’t even have to breathe. Though I was kind of rooting for a complete mental breakdown. They’d probably cart you off and I could skip up in line.”_

_Quentin barely heard her, too busy squinting at the spellwork glittering in his hands. _

_It was stupid that he hadn’t noticed. So stupid, and blind. Just because he was dead didn’t mean magic was, and just because he’d given up all his secrets to Penny-40 didn’t mean that others -- gods, officials, people in power -- didn’t have their own._

_Whatever this working was, it was trying to keep him from reading a certain pamphlet by shuffling all the other ones he hadn’t yet read to the forefront. Anxious now for different -- better? -- reasons, Quentin glanced up to the front of the line -- slow-moving, hellish, and absolutely not long enough. _

_“Shit,” he grunted, and flinched when an official swept by. He could practically feel the cold side-eye they gave him, contemplating what he needed to be tricked into -- and that was right, wasn’t it? This was all a bit of trickery, some sleight of hand, meant to distract. So far, everything had been an effort to bend him into this shit-show complacency, fed platitudes so he gave up, surrendered, just like Quentin had been doing all his stupid, fucked up life, before he --_

_Before he learned about magic; before he found Eliot waiting for him on the Brakebills lawn; before Fillory and High Kings and quests and a long, slow love that encompassed everything._

_The darkness never went away, not completely. But it had scuttled to the edges in the face of all the rest -- of life, and duty, and love. Quentin had learned that he liked living, liked fighting, that it was worth it to reach out his hand for someone else, to hold on tight and never let go, letting them bring him to safe harbor. Hard to remember at times, but still, he’d learned, and it was a truth to which he’d begun keeping close inside his heart during all those long decades lost in a Fillorian past, and -- and then Eliot had turned away from him, cast him aside, and Quentin couldn’t believe that he’d let himself forget how much life was worth living, how beautiful it was, for even one moment, but he --_

_He had._

_He’d been willing, so, so fucking willing, to just give up. To cast it aside. Not just because of Eliot. It was just -- there had seemed to be too many shadows in the world, stains that couldn’t come out: Julia’s rape, Penny’s death, the perversion of everything pure he’d ever loved by Christopher Plover; his dad’s death and Quentin’s hand in it, and --_

_So much. There had been so, so much pain, but he still shouldn’t have done it. _

_Shouldn’t have given up that moment Poppy asked him about children; the darkness had unfolded around him then, grief and longing and a certainty that he’d always be alone. Far too simple a thing, then, to choose to stay in Blackspire, to give up everything and everyone to become prisoner and prison both. _

_He should not have_ fucking _ done that._

_But Quentin had. And then Eliot had ruined it, ruined everything because not once in all their years together had Eliot left him in the dark alone. No, he had always been there, holding his hand, ready to pull him out. Even when Quentin didn’t think he deserved it; even when they’d been fighting; even when Eliot himself had been sparking and spitting with all his own issues, keeping a wary distance like he was trying to drive Quentin away. _

_Eliot had always been back at his side to bear Quentin’s weight as soon as he realized that Quentin might need, desperately, to know that he was loved, that there were still good things worth living for. It was the worst kind of idiocy that Quentin could have assumed, for even one second, that Eliot would have let him go off into the dark alone like that._

_There were tears making his vision blur._

_With a quiet snuffle, Quentin blinked them away, forcing back the well of emotion thick in his throat. Because too many times he had forgotten to keep on fighting, had forgotten why it was worth it to keep trying._

_And now, he owed it to himself not to forget again._

Eliot, _he thought, with absolute, vicious conviction_, you’d better not be drinking yourself to death. You’d better not give up without me there to bear your weight. _Tears prickled his eyes again, a burn that woke him up. Inside he felt a war zone, one large wound that oozed and failed to heal. But that was fine. The pain kept him from forgetting, and he didn’t want to forget, he wanted -- well._

_There were a lot of things he wanted._

_Quentin ducked his head and started up his speed reading once more, as fast as he could, dropping pamphlets recklessly to the floor as he finished. There wasn’t enough time, but he had to try. Had to hope that there was some answer here that he could find, and time enough to get to it. He supposed his best chance was hoping that -- even dead and possibly tricked into being glad about it, people were still people. Hopefully there’d be some asshole ahead of him who caused a fuss and held up the line just because they felt like being a raging dick. _

_Hm. Maybe he should let Stephanie go ahead of him after all._

\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Shadowspire City  
\------------------------------------------------------------

There was nothing to do save follow the quest creature’s horrid directions, and eventually they _did_ manage to find their way into the heart of the city, where the buildings were all dirty and old. “How did we not find this before?” Margo wondered, and Eliot could only shrug, and wonder with a sinking feeling how many of the Fillorians they’d spoken to had, in fact, been unable to even see the tree sigil at all. If it really was connected to a goddess, then maybe there were protections in place; if a quest creature had enough power to keep Eliot and Margo out of a whole section of a city, then maybe --

Eliot finally saw what they were looking for across the street, four shopfronts down, and he forgot to wonder about anything else at all. “Margo,” Eliot whispered, stiffening up in shock.

She stilled next to him, hands hovering as if ready to attack or defend, whichever they needed. “What is it _now?_”

“Clocks,” Eliot said.

“Oh, fuck me with a rusty knife and call it sex,” Margo complained, turning and following his line of sight. Between an accountant’s shop and a butcher’s, there stood what a dusty glass storefront with the words COGWATCHER’S WATCHES, COGS, & OTHER THINGS painted in faded blue across it. Several old, horrifyingly familiar grandfather clocks were on display behind the grimy glass.

With a pained murmur, Eliot asked, “When is a clock not a clock?”

“When it’s a fucking pain my ass,” Margo sniped back. 

Eliot nearly choked on a laugh, forcing it down in fear that it might come out a bit too hysterical for decency. _Clocks_. It just figured; no doubt this was precisely where the quest creature had intended them to go. 

Eliot followed Margo’s quick, furious pace across the street, nearly stumbling -- half because the cobblestones in this area of the city were far less well-maintained, and also because he kept thinking about all the different clocks that had fucked up their lives, changing them irrevocably. He wondered if he’d find one here that he could step through, one that would take him to a place where he had Quentin again and all the goddamned time in the world to do it _right_. To do it better, to learn how to be happy, _really_ happy. 

That laugh, edged with pain and panic, tried to bubble forth again, but Eliot still wouldn’t let it emerge, swallowing it down uncomfortably. Because Eliot already knew that the gods didn’t actually give two shits about them. There wouldn’t be any kind of magical fix to the horror show that had become his life.

There was no such thing as a happy ending.

There _wasn’t_, not for a queer boy from Indiana who’d found magic via death. Not for a coward who hadn’t learned the importance of bravery until he’d been trapped inside his own mind by a homicidal monster. Time had proven only that there was no happiness due Eliot Waugh, who failed in marriage to Fen, failed at being High King of Fillory, failed his daughter, his lover, his son and grandchildren, who failed _himself_ time and time again, only ever seeming able to drown his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle or ever-full flask, and even when he _wasn’t_ drunk off his ass trying not to feel, he _still_ couldn’t keep his shit together long enough to make the right choice. 

No, there was no happy ending in any world for him. He’d come close with the mosaic, but even there he’d made more mistakes than not. If he were a less self-destructive person, maybe he could learn to be content enough that he’d gotten a glimpse of it with Quentin, even if now he was expected to live with its absence like a burning pit in his chest, angry and inflamed and hazardous. 

A pity he seemed to excel in self-destruction.

_Stop that_, came a whisper in the back of his mind, thin and silvery like a scar. He grit his teeth and thought it again, louder this time: _stop it, stop thinking like this, you haven’t the luxury right now_, because even if all of that were true, it didn’t matter. Eliot had made his choice: to stay here with Margo, to fight and live and keep on moving forward, no matter the cost. Margo and Quentin had both given too much to gift him his life back for him to just throw it away, so he -- he wouldn’t. But damn if it wasn’t hard not to sink into tar pits of self-pity at the slightest provocation. 

That was fine though; Eliot was slowly learning how to haul his way back out of the grime.

He ducked his head and tried to breathe shallowly, trying to remember how Margo had done it last night, the steady beat of her strong, ferocious heart. A bell tinkled overhead as he followed Margo through the shop’s door, alerting whoever was minding the place of their arrival. The whole place felt oppressive, dimly lit and cluttered and untidy, with barely space enough to walk down the aisles. Shelf upon shelf of clocks were on display, and from everywhere came the sound of ticking, all of them in time so that it became an overbearing echo in Eliot’s ears, each twitch of the second hand a blow to make him flinch.

Margo, not a patient bone in her body, cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Hello! Is there anyone still alive in all this ungodly mess?!”

A crash came from the back, followed by a curse.

“Sorry!” said a voice, and Margo started forward while Eliot jerked to a stop, like a puppet at the end of its strings, caught fast. He hung back, blinking, because --

_No_.

Impossible.

Shock was making him cold all over, his brain slipping into a white-fuzzed, empty panic before he even understood the reason, before he could grasp what was wrong. Still, the world tilted on its axis and Eliot’s heart began to pound as that voice -- familiar, so familiar, _why_, what was going on here? -- said, “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t expect -- I mean. Hello, welcome to uh, Cogwatcher’s? Are you -- looking for a clock?”

“Is that surprising?” Margo drawled. “You do _sell_ them, don’t you?”

“Well -- yeah.” 

Grunting, the voice finally exploded out the back and into the front of the store, staggering to a stop behind the worn cashier’s desk, littered with bits of clock innards. Even through the gut clenching, scalding panic, Eliot gave him a slow once over, ravenous with the need to look, to _see_. The young man was shorter than Eliot, stocky of build, his long brown hair pulled severely back from his face into a low ponytail. He had on wire-rim glasses and his hands fluttered anxiously across the desk, like his fingers instinctively sought something to occupy them.

As if in a dream, Eliot moved forward until he was standing just behind Margo, who had -- finally -- cottoned on and gone silent in surprise.

Because they both knew those hands, that body, that _face_. 

Eliot especially knew them. And he knew that voice, and that clumsiness, and the familiar, fond exasperation that bloomed in his chest from it. Knew the nervous habits, and the awkwardness, and -- and if he imagined a deck of playing cards beneath those fingers, Eliot could imagine magic happening. Even with that frankly _atrocious_ hair and those spectacles, there was no mistake about who Eliot was staring at, seemingly alive, breathing, and a goddamned Fillorian _clockmaker_, looking as absurdly dense and puzzled as he had the day Eliot first met him one sunny afternoon on the lawn of Brakebills.

“Q,” he breathed.

“What the _fuck_,” Margo snarled.


	5. Chapter Four

  
  


#### CHAPTER FOUR

\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Shadowspire City  
Cogwatcher’s Watches, Cogs, & Other Things  
\------------------------------------------------------------

There were very few things Margo wouldn’t do for those she loved -- no, scratch that -- there was _absolutely nothing_ she wouldn’t do. After all, she’d already given herself a lifetime supernatural STD, lost a god damned eye, her kingdom and crown, and on the rare occasion: her dignity.

The problem though, was that she didn’t always know _what_ to do in order to protect those she loved. 

Occasionally it took some troubleshooting, or a lot of thinking on her feet and figuring out the rest later. Eliot this last round had been fairly easy -- placate the monster, take on a whole freaking desert and sexist society, and sing some badass tunes while she was at. Oh, and risk death and the destruction of the multiverse, but that was cake, really. Nothing in comparison to _losing_ Eliot. 

Helping him through grief was a whole other story, though, even if it were one she was familiar with. Mike had been _bad_, so fucking bad. Margo had hated to admit it, then and even now, but she hadn’t known how to break Eliot out his downward spiral, had waffled and worried and grown terrified at Eliot’s side, waiting for the moment where she would know what to _do_ to fix him. And she’d thought, after learning about Eliot’s plans to try and _date_ Coldwater, learning he’d remembered half a century of being _with_ him and loving him, that the fallout this time around would be more of the same: messy, violent, and incredibly destructive.

It wasn’t.

Or at least, not quite. Obviously, he was falling apart on the inside, and she’d witnessed more than one moment of darkly self-destructive thought processes, but -- it wasn’t at all the same as before. Apparently Quentin had been good for him, considering Eliot was at least _trying_ to keep his shit together, could still look out past his self-hate and loneliness and make an _attempt_ to keep going, keep soldiering on even when he felt like calling it quits. And Margo…

Well, she honestly didn’t know if the change was for better or worse.

Because Margo had no idea how to save Eliot from being lost. Not from something like this quiet, all-consuming pain, and grief, and longing. It seemed the kind of heartbreak that would never fade, though it may gentle over time. But for now, it seemed untouchable, insurmountable. Eliot could keep trying to pretend like he wasn’t broken inside, all “It’s going to be weird for a while,” and maybe it was true, maybe he really would be okay eventually, but Margo _knew_ him. She knew Eliot Waugh, and he --

He was _not_ okay.

Not yet, at least. And this? _This_ bullshit happening right now, right here, where they were faced with this -- this _bullshit vision_ of Quentin fucking Coldwater, blinking quizzically at them from behind unfashionable glasses, was _definitely_ not going to help with Eliot’s recovery, fuck it all. Standing in that heinous clock shop, full of cluttered, dusty things with the afternoon light pouring through grimy windows, she felt a moment of violent alarm and unspeakable sadness, everything going too sharp and vivid around her.

It was the realization that, sometimes, you cannot in fact shield those you’ve sworn to protect, no matter how hard you try.

And it -- it _infuriated_ her.

There was nothing for Margo to do in response save launch into a full assault.

“Uh,” said the freak behind the counter, frowning at them. “Is... something wrong?”

“Wrong? Oh, I’d say so,” Margo said, gone stone-still with rage. “I swear, I’m going to find whoever made you and I’m going to rip their balls off, and then I’m going to reach into their asshole and dig around for a while until I get a nice, good, meaty grip on their intestines and then I’m going to slowly, carefully, _painstakingly_ pull them out -- if they’ve eaten anything recently it might feel a bit like anal beads, who knows, but I’ll be sure to keep them alive long enough to tell me.”

The copy of Quentin was pale and looking ill. “Uh,” he said, swaying a little while his hands gripped the side of the table, as if it were the only thing keeping him upright after Margo’s promise of pain and agony. “That -- oh my _gods_, that -- gross! Ugh, I think -- I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Aww,” said Margo, puckering her face up in a pout and striding forward, so only the cluttered table was between them. 

She was aware of Eliot behind her. Since he’d whispered Quentin’s name he hadn’t made another sound, nor had he moved. _Good_, Margo thought. He needed to stay there, out of this. She honestly hoped he would pass out, because that would be better on so many levels, and Margo could probably find the rage-strength to carry him back to The Horny Unicorn, and then she could just tell him this was a fucked up hallucination or something when he woke.

In the meantime, Margo had to figure this shit out.

“Poor little Quentin,” she mocked. “Still so pure and delicate. Now tell me, you horribly dressed fraud, who’s your master, huh? What are you? Some golem? An illusion spell? I’m not --”

“Margo,” Eliot said, voice thin and wavering.

Margo went still, shoulders stiffening, because _damn it_, why couldn’t Eliot just do the sensible thing for once and _pass the fuck out_. She didn’t turn to face him, though, unable to take her eyes off of imposter Q. 

He just -- he looked so _weird_. Quentin had always looked pretty good with longish hair, but that had also been when he had some semblance of _style_. It had also never been _this_ long, and seriously, what the fuck was with this weird, sort of vampire-chic looking tail, his hair pulled back so sternly from his forehead. Gross, it looked gross, and wrong, and what was _with_ those spectacles?

“_Margo_,” Eliot said, a little more insistently.

She snapped back, “_What_, El?” and had the dubious pleasure of watching The Q That Wasn’t, who had just begun to gain back a little more color, lose it rapidly once more. He blinked several times behind those awful glasses and then looked back over her shoulder to where Eliot stood, reeling.

“That _can’t_ be Quentin.”

“No, you think?” sneered Margo, which maybe wasn’t the kindest response in Eliot’s time of need, but she was a little stressed out herself at the moment. “Tell me something I _don’t_ know.”

“What’s your fairy eye say?”

“Nothing,” she admitted grudgingly. “He’s clean as a whistle. Nothing denoting anything other than his own magic on him, except -- oh. Wait, there _is_ something.”

“How do you know my name?” Q-bot said to Eliot, which, _no_. 

Margo snapped her fingers at him. “Hey, hey,” she said. “Not so fast, you’re not talking to him, you’re talking to _me_, got that, Coldwater?”

“Er --” he said, finally jerking his big-eyed, dumb stare back from Eliot to Margo, thank fuck. “That’s -- okay, so you know, it kind of makes sense that you’d know my first name. I admit, that might have been a dumb question. This was my father’s shop -- he died last year, and now I run it, so -- right, people know me, I guess. If you asked around or something, they might have… Uh.”

“Wow,” said Margo, half to herself. “They really got the awkward rambling down right, didn’t they?”

She was so afraid to turn and look at Eliot, to see how he was handling this.

Mostly, because she couldn’t imagine that he was handling this.

“But that -- _that’s_ weird. What you just called me. Coldwater? Because it’s not -- not my _name_, but I… I’ve heard it before. I think? And this is weird, okay, this is really weird, because I’m just -- I’m just a nobody, just a clockmaker, and -- and this feels -- I feel like I _know_ you, and I know that name, and I want to fucking know _why_ because I shouldn’t! I -- I really, really shouldn’t,” he finished with a frustrated little rise to his voice, and, _oh_, that was familiar too, that look of irritated exasperation, that stubborn, dogged determination to get to the end of his argument, to reach his point, because he felt certain that his point mattered, somehow, and he was tired of people pretending like it didn’t.

_Fuck_, whoever built him had done a damned good job.

Margo was going to murder them.

“I’m Quentinatick Cogwatcher,” the little asshole said. “Who -- Do I --” again, his gaze slipped from Margo to Eliot, as if magnetized. “Do I -- Do I _know_ you?”

“Fuck,” muttered Margo, right as the first crash sounded behind her. She whirled on her feet to look at Eliot, who had his shoulders back, chin up, and that look of cold, implacable fury on his face, a High King who had had _enough_ of this shit, the kid from Indiana who was _tired_ of being stepped on. 

Eliot said, very simply, “No.”

It wasn’t a denial to the question -- _Do I know you?_ \-- but instead, a firm refusal to accept this reality. _No, this isn’t happening_. Margo wasn’t surprised, and she wasn’t surprised when Eliot reached out and grabbed another clock -- beautiful, ornate, and in good working order as far as Margo could tell -- and swept it off the shelf and to the floor, where it exploded into a thousand tiny pieces, springs and gears and splinters of wood.

“H-hey,” shouted this Quentinatick Cogwatcher guy. “Stop! Do you have any idea how much work went into -- no, no not that one, don’t -- ohhh, gods damn everything, _fuck_ \--”

Eliot was staring straight at the mimicry of his lost love, not even blinking. His eyes looked too bright, and feral, and there were broken clocks everywhere. Margo gave him a minute to indulge his tantrum, but only a minute -- she had figured out what she needed to know, all she was likely to get in such a short time, and she couldn’t bear to allow Eliot endure this much longer.

She was all too afraid that each shattered clock was a mirror to Eliot’s soul: in ruins, pieces too small to fit back together again.

“El, honey,” she said, kicking a few gears and clock faces out of her way. She reached up and grabbed his hand, about to sweep a small collection of mantle clocks from their place. Holding him tightly, threading their fingers together desperately, she said, “Let’s go. _El_, let’s go.”

Behind them, in a faint, wondering voice: “...El? I thought I must’ve imagined… Wait. Wait, are you -- ?”

“Oh, _darling_,” Eliot interrupted, quiet and terrible. “You’ve made a mistake. Thinking that you can get away with _this_, wearing _his face_, speaking with _his voice_. You...”

Unable to help herself, Margo glanced backward. That familiar face was going red, all flushed with surprise, and his breath was coming quick, hitching a little on the inhale; eyes wide and luminous. Quentin had always been so _good_ at those kicked puppy dog eyes and damn it, _damn it_, this simply wasn’t fair, and it was even less so when this fucking copy dared to open his mouth again and say, in a tremulous, hopeful voice: “D-darling? I… it is you, it’s -- but you can’t be real. You _can’t_. Eliot. El, I --”

Margo snatched a small, but surprisingly heavy clock off a shelf, and hurled it at the Q-bot. He yelped, ducking down behind his desk. Thank _fuck_, because Margo didn’t know how to handle what he’d been saying, but she knew even less how _Eliot_ was going to handle it, and she’d be damned if she stood here and let poison drip into his ears.

“Fuck you,” Margo said, mostly to the multiverse at large.

The clockmaker peeked up hesitantly over his desk, eyes wide and zeroed in, once more, on Eliot. “Fuck,” he whispered. “This can’t be happening.”

“It really can’t,” Eliot agreed, and the words sounded like a prelude to a storm, thin and wavering, a breathless moment from breaking. 

Margo turned back to him, hissing, “Please. Please, El. Let’s _go_,” and finally Eliot blinked. He craned his head around to look at her, every gesture stiff, as if he had become marble and forgotten what it meant to move, to bend, to be human -- but he looked down at her, and she could see the tears shivering against his bottom lashes, threatening to spill, the solemn, merciless line of his mouth in his white face --

Oh, _Eliot_.

With a push, she got him moving. Mercifully, Cogwatcher didn’t make another noise, didn’t say a single damned thing as they left his store a wreck. Margo hustled Eliot back to the inn, as quickly as she could.

But even half a city away she could still see it, a burning after image her fairy eye couldn’t blink away.

That weird ass tree sigil, glowing god-bright on Cogwatcher’s brow.

\------------

The Library  
Office of Alice Quinn, Head of Circulation  
\------------------------------------------------------------

She was on the phone with Penny, because he knew as well as she did what today was. “You could come down here while we wait,” he coaxed, “Marjorie’s made cookies again, I hear. I’m sure no one would mind if the head of HR dropped by and nipped a few.”

“That’s abusing your position,” Alice said, smiling. 

“No, no,” Penny assured her, that half-mocking drawl warm and familiar. “I only abuse my position to keep our relationship protected, as you know. Cookies are just a perk.”

She laughed, because after three hundred years he was still that young man that had made her feel better, just that once, right before everything had fallen to complete and utter shit the first time. It was amazing the journey people could take, coming full circle through bitterness, grief, surrender, back to the warmth and strength that had made them so remarkable in the first place.

She said, “I’m a little nervous.”

“I know,” he teased. “The fearsome Alice Quinn, afraid to meet up once more with the popular kids at their three hundred year reunion. You do know that you’re, like, way older than them now, right? Capable, strong -- don’t let them make you feel small.”

“No one ever did that,” Alice admitted, because it was easy to admit now. “I only ever did that to myself. But I’m still -- it’s been a long time. I won’t be surprised if I -- if I’m caught off guard, no matter that we’ve been planning for this.”

Penny hummed down the line. “It’s almost time.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Penny, standing in front of her in her office, handsome and smiling in his gray suit. Alice set her phone back in its receiver, rolling her eyes.

“Travelers. You do like your entrances,” she said dryly. Standing, she straightened her skirt, adjusted her blouse. She caught Penny looking at her appreciatively and couldn’t help a little quirk of an amused, smug smile. It wasn’t as though he didn’t look at her like this normally, but she also hadn’t worn anything quite this hipster in a century.

“Well, that get-up sure takes me back. For someone who acted so meek, you sure didn’t do a good job of hiding your,” Penny waved a hand up and down wickedly, “physical assets.” 

Again, Alice rolled her eyes, but, well -- he may have had a point. “I’m feeling nostalgic,” Alice defended. “Now, are you ready?” 

“You look good, babe, don’t worry,” Penny said, grinning. “And yeah. At least this will be a hell of a lot easier than last time. Not nearly so many fiddly horomancy machines giving me migraines. Do tell Margo and Eliot that they’re _welcome_ for that. I was puking my guts out for a week afterward.”

“You big baby,” Alice snorted. “That was three hundred years ago. Haven’t you gotten over it yet?”

“The dead don’t get sick,” Penny pointed out easily, casual and calm, the flow of words working to keep Alice from focusing on her nerves. It was appreciated, and sweet, and she’d have to do something to thank him when she came back. He kept going, saying, “So I tend to remember feeling like I’d gotten the flu times a million, okay? It sticks with you. I smelled like stale vomit for two months after, I swear.”

“Uh huh,” Alice smiled.

When she came around the desk he stepped closer, wrapping an arm around her, holding her close. 

Alice breathed in slowly, counting down from ten quietly -- she was in tune with more forces than she’d ever expected, now, far more than she’d imagined she could ever be outside of being a niffin again. If she’d known then what she might become, how she might help, perhaps she wouldn’t have fought her renewed humanity so intensely. Perhaps things would have been different, better, or --

They could have been worse.

The world was too big and brilliant and strange for what-ifs. There was only what to do next, and how to fix the broken things that needed mending. 

Alice said, “Zero,” and closed her eyes tight as Penny traveled.

\------------------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Shadowspire City  
The Horny Unicorn Inn  
\------------------------------------------------------------

By the time they made it to the main room of the inn Eliot was feeling numb, rather than wrecked. The boiling, fearful rage in his belly, the instinctive need to rip the world apart before it could make _him_ bleed, had shuddered and stopped and become some cold, congealed thing, quivering with misery. He started toward the bar, determined, but --

“Oh, no,” said Margo. “Not this, nope, sorry El, but we’re not drinking away our problems, at least not yet. You and I have to get to the bottom of this.”

“The only bottom I’m interested in,” Eliot managed to say in a sort of dreamy slur, “is the bottom of a bottle. Or whatever the hell that Q lookalike was, because honestly, if I’m going to be tormented like this I should at _least_ get a fucked up grief-bang out of it, right?”

“No,” said Margo.

Eliot said, “_Yes_,” and lurched toward the bar.

But Margo was a lot stronger than most people thought. And even though Eliot knew she was, it wasn’t like he was really thinking about that, or -- or anything at all, except for the chunk of time in his and Q’s Fillorian life where Quentin had let his hair grow long enough to tie back at the nape of his neck, and how much it had caused Eliot pain because it was _awful_, he looked _awful_ like that, but then all Q had to do was tug out the tie and shake his head and then --

Eliot’s fingers tangled in the strands, pulling in just that way that made Quentin moan like a whore, except he wasn’t getting paid for this, he wasn’t acting, he just liked being used that much, liked it when Eliot fucked him hard and got his hair all tangled up from sex, liked it when Eliot sat behind him on a stool while Q soaked in a bath afterward, patiently and carefully unknotting his hair while murmuring filthy things into his ear until Q was shaking with readiness all over again, and --

God, _god_, Eliot needed a drink or fifty.

But Margo had him by the shoulder and she marched him, grunting and heaving and cursing, all the way across the room to the staircase, and then up the stairs and down the hall into their room, where she tossed him in and slammed the door shut behind her. She leaned against it, as if she alone would bar his way into delirium.

“_Bambi_,” Eliot said, brokenly. “Please, I can’t -- I can’t do this right now, I can’t --”

“Eliot, just -- just calm down a second --”

“No!”

Nothing about this situation was anything close to fair, and Eliot… he felt cold, and small, and desperate. It was an unbearable feeling, made worse by the knowledge that it wouldn’t last, that soon enough the quiet would break apart with a boom, a shatter, screaming at him like madness. Before that could happen he needed to get so drunk he became numb, too far gone to feel or think properly. 

Only Margo stood sentinel against him, beautiful, perfect Margo with her scars and her determination, eyes shining and fierce. Eliot stood in the center of their room, lost, and lifted both hands out to her helplessly, his cane swinging idly from his lax grip; he beseeched her.

“_Fuck_ you. How am I supposed to handle this?” 

“One god damned second at a time,” she told him. “And with me by your side every step of the way for you to lean on. El, we’ll figure this out.”

What was there to figure out, though? 

His heart ached; it felt emptied and snarled, a cobweb twisted in the wind. Never before had he felt so tired, not even when Teddy had first been born and he and Quentin had spent their nights taking shifts walking a colicky baby so that Arielle might get _some_ sleep. Not even when he’d been recovering from axe wounds and addiction withdrawal and the bright, fresh pain of Quentin’s passing. 

“You’d think I’d be happy,” he said, and flinched from his own voice: too bright, too hard. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to be happy when your lover comes back from the dead? If this were a fairy tale --”

“Fuck fairy tales,” said Margo. “There’s no such thing as Happily Ever After.”

She wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t make him feel any better. Because Eliot _wanted_ there to be such a thing. A vision of Quentin in that hellish clock store wavered on the edges of his being, and if Eliot turned to look then he’d lose it, all of it, every little piece of himself he’d been working so hard to keep together, to keep functioning, because he -- he _wanted it to be real_. He wanted this to be a second chance at happiness, somehow. That was the real danger, what scared Eliot the most: the wild hope and longing that had bloomed at that first realization, that instinctive recognition that this was _Quentin_, here, alive… 

But he couldn’t be. He _wasn’t_. Because Quentin was dead, and this was just -- just --

It wasn’t _fair_.

He said, still with that false fire, that warbling edge in his voice that was more chipped dagger than any real strength: “He’s not real. Right? That wasn’t -- That _can’t_ be him, can’t be -- Margo, Margo how do I make this stop? I need this to _stop_.”

“Oh, honey,” she sighed, and stepped toward him.

Eliot flinched back again, and oh, he was _shaking_. God, of course he fucking was. He was so _tired_, and every part of his body was hurting. A slow, sneaking ache and throb, with the dullest and most pervasive pain his broken heart. “I am feeling fantastically overwhelmed right now,” he told Margo, twitching and jittering with panic he’d been doing his damnedest not to feel. 

Squaring her shoulders, Margo took another step, reaching for him; Eliot actually stumbled back this time, shaking his head, as that panic began to spiral tighter, sharper. “No! If you touch me I’m going to… I, I’m going to lose it. Margo, don’t. Get me, fuck, get me something to _drink_ if you care about me at all, get me a fucking bullet to the head, I --” he gasped, knees buckling. His cane clattered to the floor.

Margo caught him. “Shhh,” she murmured sweetly into his hair. Carefully, she helped shuffle him back to their pile of furs and pillows. “Come on, El. Come on, lay down with me.”

He clutched at her, curling his long legs up tight and resting his cheek against her shoulder, he held her tight and she held him tighter, as if she might keep him together through sheer force of will and fingertips. This wasn’t fair, not at all, not in any way. He had been trying so hard, harder than he ever had in his stupid, fucked up life, to remember that there was more than just his own pain, his own sorrow. Quentin would have been proud of him, surely, for how he’d packed the grief in neatly, how he’d managed to only lose himself to it a few times, when it was safer to let go; how he hadn’t forgotten there was a world outside and people who needed him.

“I can’t keep doing this,” he confessed. “I can’t. I’m so tired of feeling like this, of weeping. I want it to stop. I want everything to stop, Margo, I _need it to stop_.”

“I know. I know, El,” Margo whispered, “And I’m sorry. I love you, you bastard. Don’t you ever forget that, okay? I’ll hold you as long as you need, help you through anything. Everything. I’m _here_, Eliot. Don’t forget that. So just… let go for a little while, if you need to. I’ll put you back together again somehow, I promise.”

Eliot closed his eyes and let the grief break against him, like waves on a shore.

\-----

It was a difficult afternoon.

Margo wished she had better words, kinder ones, the sort that might help mend a broken heart. But she didn’t, because there was no magic spell or incantation that could cure the cruelty of the world. All she could do was _be there_, hold onto Eliot as tightly as she could, and promise again and again that he’d be all right. Somehow, someway. That she’d fix this and she’d help fix him and --

She needed a drink.

When Eliot’s misery exhausted him enough that he slipped into a fitful sleep, she crept quietly from the room and down the stairs. No doubt she looked a mess -- frazzled expression, unkempt hair, wounded eyes -- but she couldn’t quite bring herself to care in that moment. Because she _wanted_ to help Eliot, but once more she was left grasping after the _how_.

There were too many questions and not enough answers. Margo needed to find them; the worst thing for Eliot now would be the uncertainty of that Q-bot hanging over him. She hadn’t told Eliot about the god-sigil on the imposter’s brow, in part because where there were gods there was misery and a fuck ton of shit for Margo to wade through, but also because… 

She didn’t know; there was just _something_ that made her hesitate. 

Something that made her own mind shiver over words like _imposter_ and _Q-bot_, as if she didn’t quite believe them.

But what the fuck else _could_ he be?

“Everything is shit,” she told the bartender, leaning heavily against the bar top rather than seeking out a table. It was as crowded as it ever was during the twilit hours, and Margo was wedged between two blondes, far too close for comfort. But fuck it, she needed that drink. “And I need some of your shitty ale to drown out the world for a while. Keep ‘em coming until I fall off this stool or I’m dead, all right?”

The bear snorted rather mockingly, but went over to fill a tankard for her. Margo found herself missing Skye’s beaux, and then she found herself missing -- _everything_. Everything about the past that had made it a simpler time, a happier one, before everyone was dead or gone or scattered to the wind, and --

“Fuck this,” Margo sighed, rubbing at her temples.

“Sorry,” said Alice from right beside her. “I know this isn’t… ideal.”

Startled, Margo nearly fell off of her stool as the bartender came back, the asked-for tankard overflowing. “Ah,” she said, brown eyes narrowing at Margo over the very full tankard. “Should I stop then? You seem to already be falling off --”

“Shut your furry face! Give me that,” Margo snapped, reaching for the ale. “Thank you, wonderful, now what the _fuck_,” she said to the woman seated on the stool next to her, “are you doing here, Alice?!”

“We have a lot to talk about,” Alice said. “About Fillory and what’s happening here, but also… about Quentin.”

“He’s dead,” Margo said, voice flat.

But despite herself, she felt the tingle, the shiver in her mind, that echoed _What was lost may yet be found again._ She couldn’t unsee the god-sigil, couldn’t stop comparing Cogwatcher with Coldwater and coming up with, yeah, a lot of questions, but also a sinking certainty. So she wasn’t exactly surprised by what Alice said next, though Margo still flinched to hear it, still failed to comprehend the _how_ of it, let alone the _why_.

“He was,” agreed Alice. “But now he’s… not. He’s here in Fillory. He… Quentin is alive.”

Margo’s mouth twisted, waiting for the catch.

“Well,” Alice allowed after an uncomfortable moment. “Sort of. He’s sort of here.”

“Yep. There it is.” Margo sighed, signaling the bartender for a _lot_ more beer. She had a feeling they were going to need it. Or at least she would, if only to brace herself for figuring out _how_, exactly, she was meant to explain whatever this was to Eliot.

\------------

Underworld Meadows  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_“Next,” called the clerk._

_Quentin took the two-and-a-half steps up to the desk awkwardly, nearly tripping as the rubber sole of his shoe skidded awkwardly against the slick floors, and then slapped the pamphlet down on the cold marble of the counter. “Here,” he said. “This -- what’s this about reincarnation?”_

_The clerk jerked back, eyes wide. He was young, younger than Quentin, probably, which was just -- a sad thing to contemplate, actually. His name tag said Colin, and he had a hairstyle from the early nineteen fifties. “That’s not for you,” he said, snapping his hand out to take the pamphlet._

_Quentin leaned his weight onto the end still trapped beneath his palm and fingers, not letting him. _

_“It’s in with all the pamphlets,” he argued. “It’s here, I read it -- obviously it’s for me, even if you -- what? Didn’t want me to know, which -- why? Why the spell, why --”_

_“Oh, blast it all,” muttered the clerk, no longer looking surprised and instead just annoyed. “You’re one of those, aren’t you. Look, this service isn’t for the newly deceased. As I’m sure you’re aware,” he said with a bit of a sneer, “you still have some things to work out, some issues about dying and leaving your life behind. This is not a healthy coping mechanism, all right? You have to be dead for like, centuries before they’ll let you do this. That’s just --”_

_“No,” said Quentin, because -- centuries? No, no, no._

_Colin narrowed his eyes. “Yes. That’s why they have the spell -- they don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. There’s absolutely no way that you’ll be cleared for reincarnation. Just accept it.”_

_For a moment, Quentin felt like he couldn’t breathe, and then the moment went on and on and Quentin still wasn’t breathing because he was fucking dead, and -- and Colin was right, this probably wasn’t a healthy coping mechanism. He had a chance to see his father, to see Teddy and Arielle and his grandkids, to maybe be happy in a place that was untouched by the pain and suffering of the multiverse, but --_

_His friends were still out there._

_Eliot was still out there._

_How fucked up would it be if Quentin just -- gave all of that up?_

_“You won’t even remember anything from the life you just left,” Colin said, voice quieter now, less bladed. He sounded almost apologetic. “You can’t. That’s not how reincarnation works. Your soul is recycled, placed somewhere in one of the timelines where you might do the most good, get the most karmic benefit from it, learn some lessons. But the -- the people you’re missing. The life that you’re missing. It won’t be there. You can’t go back --”_

_Quentin dared to ask: “What’re the odds I’ll be reincarnated in a timeline that -- that has the same people, reincarnated in turn?” _

_“Slim to none,” Colin responded, brows arched high. _

_“I’ll take those odds,” Quentin decided, and his hand was trembling on his end of the pamphlet, now, but not slick enough to lose his grip because he still couldn’t sweat because he was still fucking dead, so: “It’s better than -- than giving up and waiting, right? Just leaving them -- leaving life -- I don’t -- I don’t want to die -- I want -- fuck, why is this so hard to understand -- I just --”_

_Two officials popped up on either side of him, far too close._

_“Mr Coldwater,” said one in bellicose tones, “Please consider your environment for a moment. Even if you have decided to selfishly fight reality, that doesn’t mean you have the right to upset countless other souls prepared to move on. Please calm --”_

_“I will not calm down!” Quentin half-yelled, and he felt stupid and ridiculous, but he’d felt that way countless times before. This was nothing in comparison, surely. He could do this, could make a fuss, a scene, forcing himself to act absurd when the moment called for it, when the critical chance presented itself. Glaring at Colin rather than either dead-eyed official, he said, “If I’m so much trouble then just -- just give me what I want. Let me --”_

_“It doesn’t work that way!”_

_“Mr Hollycomb,” said the other official, very gentle and polite. “There is no need to raise your voice. Please pull up Mr Coldwater’s files.” Turning to Quentin, they said: “Give him your credentials. At this point in your karmic cycle there is only one way you could possibly be viable for reincarnation, Mr Coldwater. We will do you this courtesy of checking, so long as you will do us the courtesy of not making a further scene when --”_

_While the official droned on, Quentin had slipped his information across the counter, that little slip of paper that held all of who he was in its cramped, Times New Roman font. Colin had begun typing, agitated, muttering about “Bloody hero sub-class assholes,” while he did so. _

_And then with another startled jolt of surprise he looked up at Quentin with a furrowed brow, and interrupted the overly polite, condescending official. “He’s been flagged.”_

_The official stopped talking, only for the belligerent official to demand, “Flagged? For what?!”_

_“Reincarnation,” said Colin, clearly perturbed. “What… what is this? Never in all my decades here… Only a god or goddess can flag a mortal soul for early reincarnation. But it --” Colin Hollycomb looked back at his screen, painfully confused and angry about it. “Seventy years after Quentin Coldwater’s death, Our Lady of the Tree flagged him for immediate reincarnation benefits upon his request.”_

_Our Lady of the…_

_Quentin started laughing, laughing hard enough he finally let go of the pamphlet and had to grip the edges of the counter, his knees barely holding him up. “Julia,” he gasped. “The hell did you get up to? God.” _

_Thank fuck the Underworld system didn’t rely on the linear timeline, apparently._

_“Well,” Quentin managed, finally hauling himself upright and grinning stupidly at the three Underworld agents, all glowering at him in varying states of disgruntlement, concern, and irritation at circumventing their system. “I guess -- yay for me? And also. I am formally requesting reincarnation benefits, thanks.”_

_Colin stabbed a button hard enough to be called brutal. A click, a whir -- another form being printed out._

_“I hope you know,” said the gentle-sounding official, very quietly, “That happy endings aren’t meant for the living. You’ve only signed up for more suffering, and when you’re out there, breathing and bleeding, wondering why -- you won’t even know that you’ve done it to yourself. That you brought all that pain and misfortune on of your own free will.”_

_Quentin shrugged, taking his new paperwork from poor, always-a-teenager Colin. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Now where do I go from here?”_


	6. Chapter Five

  
  


#### CHAPTER FIVE

\------------------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Shadowspire City  
The Horny Unicorn Inn  
\------------------------------------------------------------

Though his own emotions had exhausted him, Eliot was unable to sleep for long. Too much tension, too much fear -- it woke him with a startled jolt, a lurch of his body that followed the motion of his heart within its cage of ribs, as if it hurt so badly that it couldn’t resist clamoring for attention, desperate for escape. Even as he settled once more amidst the furs, staring up at the cobwebs strewn across the dark wooden beams of the room’s ceiling and attempting, somewhat wearily, to pretend like his heart wasn’t in tatters, he couldn’t resist pressing the heel of his hand against that ache, trying to quiet it.

_Why_, it squeezed back. _Why, why, why? Why is this happening?_

Eliot didn’t know. He had never known why all the dark and terrible things seemed enamored of him. For as long as he could remember it was as though every good thing in his life was touched by misery, rotten somewhere in its core. Easier to stop asking _why_; easiest to look away from the question, for fear of the answer: that there was something rotten in _him_. 

“I’m so tired of hurting,” he told the empty cobwebs. 

They seemed unimpressed, preoccupied with their own lonesome existence. Sticky strands left abandoned, left unmoored and drifting in any slight breeze. Eliot truly hated feeling kinship with cobwebs, but that, apparently, was his life now: tragic and embarrassing in equal measure. 

He said, “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

Again, no response. 

But Eliot didn’t actually care for one. He wasn’t speaking in order to be answered; he spoke only because it bore saying, because perhaps if he gave voice to the way he felt, then the pain might become more manageable. He was glad to be alone for a moment, Margo nowhere to be found. Eliot wasn’t surprised. For all Margo’s determination to keep Eliot away from drinking to soothe his troubled mind, she herself was prone to the same weakness. She’d have to be in order to keep up with Eliot’s long-established histrionics and flirtation with alcoholism. 

And his earlier hysterics were surely enough to drive even a _saint_ to drink.

Margo was no saint, but-- His chest felt hot, suddenly, tight and too small as he remembered Margo holding him, telling him to let go and just _grieve_ if he needed to, tender and intimate and _there_ for him. She’d started sweeping her hands through his curls as if it might soothe him, as if she might wipe all the memories that pained him away if only she showed how much she cared. 

Amazing, that Eliot might feel so much love and gratitude even while he felt so miserable. How resilient the human fucking heart, and how contradictory.

It hurt, but Eliot allowed himself to remember how Quentin had done the same for him, so many lifetimes ago. In their little cottage, in their almost happily ever after. When Eliot woke from a nightmare, or worked himself up into a fit of fury and despair, utter frustration, Quentin would pull him down into his arms, run his fingers over the crown of his head, doing his best to hum nearly forgotten Earth songs until Eliot joined in, if just because he couldn’t bear how badly Quentin was _butchering_ them. 

His chest got tighter, hotter, until his heart could no longer lurch against its rattling cage; it barely fit. So much love, so much gratitude, so much misery. Just _so much_ of everything, it seemed. He pressed harder against his chest, trying to mute the ache. 

“I can’t cry anymore,” he told the cobwebs, eyes blurring over and prickling, throat raw and wounded with unshed tears. “I can’t, _I can’t_.”

Eliot wished he understood why this was happening to him. Why, when Eliot was finally getting his shit together, learning how to properly mourn and maybe, just _maybe_ let go, Quentin’s fucking double had to appear in a _fucking_ Fillorian clock shop and ruin everything. So many times he’d turned his back on the question, fearful of the answer. But he wouldn’t turn from _this_ question. For once, Eliot really fucking wished he _knew_. 

He wanted to demand the truth, to force the multiverse to cough up an answer. Because perhaps there was something wrong with Eliot, some integral piece of soul that was twisted and broken, that caused his own hands and voice and heart to lead him to ruin every time he grasped for happiness, but this? 

This was too much. 

_This_ pain, this bleak heartbreak, this oozing darkness like tar that filled him, was _entirely_ too fucking much.

No one, not even Eliot, deserved this kind of misery. Because, worst of all, now he couldn’t stop the gibbering terror of _hope_ that still kept trying to claw its way up his throat. 

Turning his head, he couldn’t help but check the time through the open window. Still plenty enough sun in the sky to keep the shadows at bay; he could make it to that twice damned clock store with time to spare, even with his limping gait. And Eliot _wanted_. He wanted so badly that he forced his eyes shut, closing out the late afternoon light. 

“I shouldn’t,” he told the imaginary spider he decided lived in all those vacant cobwebs, unable to bear more loneliness. “Right? I shouldn’t. I know better than to fall in love with someone who isn’t real. I tried it before, you know. I didn’t know that was what was happening at the time, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that none of it was _real_. I don’t want a fake. I want _Quentin_, so this-- this lookalike can just-- just--”

He sucked in a shaky breath, squeezed his eyes tighter still. “Fuck. _Fuck_.”

His whole face hurt, all puffed up and hot from how much he’d cried. His head throbbed with a headache, his body with exhaustion and muscle strain. He tried to focus on that pain, the gritty reality of it. Fairy tales weren’t real, happily ever afters didn’t exist. There was just after, and getting through it, and so it couldn’t -- _shouldn’t_ \-- matter that the man in Cogwatcher’s shop had seemed so real.

Quentin was _dead_.

Eliot fucking _knew this_, and yet, it was still taking every scrap of willpower that Eliot possessed not to get up, to limp his way out of this fucking inn, and go find out how similar the two might be. 

He felt unforgivably pathetic for that weakness, for how badly he wanted. Because yes, Quentin was dead, but if there was some way, some slim, fickle chance that the emotions and personality, the core of Quentin, all those pieces that had made him a snarky little shit and a pure-hearted hero both, could be replicated, could be _made_ real through other means… 

If Eliot could have him back, even if it wasn’t _quite_ the same…

Just because it hadn’t worked out for Kady and Penny-23 didn’t mean it couldn’t work out for Eliot, right? Shuddering, Eliot curled into a ball, pulling a thick fur over his shoulders and head, burrowing into darkness. His mind was treacherous it seemed, bleak and full of pitfalls. Eliot knew better than to follow that line of thought further. There was no point considering it, because it would never work. Whatever that Cogwatcher creature had been, so familiar but impossible, it wasn’t Eliot’s second chance. 

He wasn’t lucky enough for that.

\---

For a small eternity, Eliot lay like that: curled up small, as insignificant as he could make himself. There was only his humid breath and the musty scent of the fur, the quiet, close-pressed darkness he’d shrouded himself in. His heart ached, then went quiet until he found himself drifting carefully on blankness, a shivery, white-noise kind of emptiness that came from too much crying, too many emotions having been purged, and not enough energy to dredge up new ones.

It was nearly blissful, possibly helped by Fillory’s opium problem. Eliot wasn’t complaining.

Like this, Eliot felt like he was nothing more than an act of existence, safely outside of his troubles, his sorrows, his worries and fears. He felt untouchable, and he wondered idly how long he could make it last, how far he could make this equilibrium stretch, if maybe he could cling to it until this business with Quentin’s double and Margo’s kingdom could be put to bed.

That, too, seemed too much to hope for, but at least a safer bet. And then the door slammed open and spat Margo out.

“I KNOW EVERYTHING,” she yelled, righteous and glorious with inebriation. “WE ARE GOING TO KICK SOME DARK LORD ASS, ELIOT.”

Within his furry cocoon, Eliot sighed. Still mostly calm, still mostly untouchable, still too weary to be altogether bothered by anything at all. But even so, he felt he had his answer: the odds were very much against him. This calm was _not_ going to last very long, not if Margo kept up the drunken wailing.

Damn it.

“ELIOT,” Margo continued from far too close, “DID YOU HEAR ME?”

“Oh my god,” Eliot moaned back, flinching within his hideaway. “Please, no yelling!”

“DON’T BE--” she cut herself off. When she continued, it was at much less excitable heights: “_Eliot_. Don’t be such a baby!”

Horribly, Margo then proceeded to bully him out from beneath his little makeshift cave of despair, poking and prodding and pulling his hair until he was sitting upright, glowering at her smug, drunk face in the early evening light. _Everything_ hurt, and sitting upright seemed far too much trouble than it was worth, but Eliot held onto the white-noise quiet of too much grief and did his best to ignore everything that made him feel ugly with hate. Just because he knew the calm wouldn’t last didn’t mean Eliot wanted it to go; he clung as best he could.

“What happened to you?” Eliot complained halfheartedly. “Where did the Margo of earlier go? Where are all my kind words and soft touches and you treating me like I’m made of glass? Why is drunk Margo so _mean_.”

Margo winked. “You like it when I’m mean.” 

“I love it,” Eliot agreed, trying to find a smile and wincing when he couldn’t. He rubbed at his face instead. “Really, I do. But not so much right now. Bambi, I’m _tired_. Just… leave me alone a little longer, yeah? I’m not ready to feel yet, I don’t want to--”

“Shut up,” Margo ordered, gripping his wrists in her hands and tugging them down to reveal his puffy, cried-out face. She was on her knees, crouched before him, leaning in far too close. Her eyes were widely dilated, her speech was slightly slurred, and she stank of beer. 

Eliot wrinkled his nose, distressed.

“Shut _up_,” Margo insisted.

“I didn’t say anything,” Eliot groaned.

Margo leaned in closer, pressed her forehead against his. It was a little sweaty and made that putrid, stale beer stink all the more potent, but… a sweet gesture nonetheless. Eliot felt some of the tension that had been building up in his shoulders release, a little tendril of emotion coming to life inside of him. But nothing too dangerous, nothing that was too painful to handle. Just friendship, love, security -- the things that Margo made him feel, all the time.

“All right,” he sighed, twisting his hands so that their hands were clasped together, showing his willingness. “I’m shutting up, so go ahead and tell me exactly what all you know. Everything, was it?”

“_Yes_. There is a lot of weird ass shit that I have to tell you. I’ll try and be better at explaining it than Alice was!”

Eliot’s whole face scrunched up in confusion. “Wait. What’s Alice have to do with anything?”

“Damn,” Margo muttered. “Not a good start.”

\---

Half an hour later, Eliot was still trying to stay afloat on that opium-laced, sweet feeling of detachment. But truth be told it was getting harder and harder to hold on to, as he was officially having some slight trouble understanding reality. And that was only in part because Margo had apparently imbibed enough ale to put an entire ship full of alcoholic pirates into a drunken stupor.

“But no, seriously,” she was slurring now, pacing about the room with her hands gesticulating wildly. “I need to get Alice’s skin care secrets, ‘cause like… that bitch does _not_ look three hundred years old, am I right?” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Eliot sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “As I did not see her! But, if I understand your drunken asides, then that skin care routine has to do with being a Librarian lackey, so…” Eliot grimaced behind his hand, his whole head throbbing with a headache made worse by confusion. “I’m going to suggest you find your own techniques.”

“Not a _lackey_,” Margo purred. “Alice is _Head Librarian_. King of Book Mountain. I wouldn’t be surprised, normally, ‘cause she is definitely bookish enough for a library gig. But this-- this is not your normal library! It’s _The_ Library. Girl’s got power. Authority!”

“She was a queen,” Eliot pointed out, still pinching at his nose.

Margo made a rude noise in rebuttal.

“You were _High King_.”

“I was,” Margo agreed with deeply vicious glee. “And guess what? I will be again, baby!”

Sighing, Eliot finally let his hand drop. 

It would have been convenient if Margo was at all biddable when intoxicated, but the only change she ever seemed to undergo was a slightly slower, wobbly tongue, and an increased ability to monologue whatever crossed her mind. Getting her to focus was nigh impossible. And while usually Eliot deeply enjoyed sitting back and watching the show, he was not currently up for such entertainment. All he wanted was for Margo to get to the _point_, the one she kept alluding to but never actually explaining.

“Darling,” he tried anyway, smiling wanly at her. “That’s wonderful. Really, but… What else was it you were supposed to tell me, hm? You said Alice specifically wanted to tell me something. That it was important, etc. What was it?”

Margo completely ignored him in order to declare, in vague but pleasant tones: “I really think I’m going to murder that pedophile with my own bare hands.”

“Yes, that sounds nice,” Eliot said, giving up. If that was the direction Margo’s drunk brain was headed, then Eliot would do his best to keep up and clarify along the way. He’d get the rest out of her eventually. “On that note, let me see if I’ve got this correct, because Bambi, this is a _whole heaping pile of what the fuck_. Christopher Plover, author of the Fillory and Further books and creator of the Beast, is here in Fillory?”

“The fucking _Dark Lord_,” Margo seethed.

Eliot nodded. “Right. Plover is this dark Immortal, got it. That spell Martin put on him is so good it's _upsetting_. But in any case, you’re saying it’s also Alice’s fault that Plover is in Fillory?”

“Yes!”

“Because she made a deal with him,” Eliot continued, “way back in our own time, and thought she was clever enough to cheat and come out the winner. And somehow, instead, he made his way through the portals and took over your kingdom and knew enough fucked up, powerful spells from the Poison Room that he managed to create an impenetrable barrier against travelers and keep Fillory in lock down for nearly three centuries?”

Margo sulked her way into a chair, crossed her arms, and growled out, “_Yes_.”

Eliot forced himself to think about that for a moment. 

It was _not_ a pleasant moment.

“Okay, one -- _how_. He’s not a magician. And two -- why can we get into Fillory _now_,” said Eliot, no longer drifting and empty, but full of disgust, regret, sadness. But not for himself this time. “Not to mention three -- oh my _god_, when people said ‘their eligible sons’ were sent every year to the Dark One, I most definitely did not think _they literally meant children_. I made a fucking _joke_ about orgies. I-- _fuck_, I feel unclean.”

“Let’s murder him,” Margo grit out, “We might feel better then.” 

“Yes, yes, absolutely,” Eliot agreed. “Christopher fucking Plover will absolutely be murdered. It shall go to the top of our itinerary. What a _mess_ this all is.”

“Fucking bombshell, right?” Margo said, sounding sleepy. “Like, Christ. Alice all old, having read all our books. Finding out the monster who created the Beast and… and fucked Fillory in the first is also the one fucking Fillory _now_… God, Quentin’s going to shit a _brick_ when he finds out.”

Eliot blinked. “...What?”

He’d been doing well, Eliot thought, through this entire situation. 

Breaking down in Margo’s arms really had helped him, and so had the stint of wallowing he’d done alone, save for the cobwebs, right afterward. He’d lanced some of the poison from the wound, in a way, and then found a bit of empty calm to buoy him up with, at least for a while. And even though it slipped from him a little, bit by bit, with each sickening jolt of horror reality spat at him, somehow or another during this conversation Eliot had been able to focus, to breathe without feeling like his chest might cave in.

Probably because the matter of Christopher Plover being in power was astronomically bad, if only for the sake of the children. Because Plover wasn’t the type of person to repent or change his ways; Eliot knew that the man was a monster down to his soul. So Margo was right -- Plover had to be stopped, killed and destroyed. They’d failed to take him out of the equation before and now there were entire generations of families who had been brutalized, traumatized, held hostage by whatever power this undying villain had at hand. 

Even grief couldn’t keep Eliot from seeing the importance of this quest. So it’d been easy, at least for a while, to stay focused. To keep on task.

But now, everything wavered. 

_Quentin’s going to shit a brick when he finds out._

Margo was falling asleep in her chair, arms still crossed stubbornly over her chest. Her eyes were closed and there was an unhappy wrinkle between her well-groomed brows that she would have been violently cross about two years ago. Now, she was simply too drunk and too focused on _being_ cross to care much about permanent wrinkles. 

Eliot also did not care about her permanent wrinkles.

In fact, in a breathless moment of selfishness, Eliot didn’t care about anything at all in that moment, save for what she’d just said. 

_How_ she’d said it. 

Present tense. Present _fucking_ tense, as if Quentin was here, was alive, as if--

Despite common sense and Eliot’s best efforts, hope splintered through him, even more savage and painful than before.

But that couldn’t be, it _couldn’t_. Eliot couldn’t afford to have hope because nothing good was ever his to keep; he didn’t get second chances. Quentin was dead, dead and gone, and there was some sort of fake here in his place, three hundred years in the future on _Fillory_ of all places, where Eliot and Margo just happened to be, where Christopher fucking Plover apparently was, along with Alice and all these mysteries and-- and _somehow_ all of these separate pieces were lining up to-- to _what_, precisely? 

What was the bigger picture here? What was it that Eliot was missing? Eliot had no clue, but he knew he fucking _needed_ to figure it out.

“Margo,” Eliot said, voice gone thin, gone crackling. He leaned forward, palms flat on the wood floor beyond the space of their makeshift bed. Every muscle felt tense; his lungs burned. “_Margo_. What did you just say. Why… _Why_ did you say it like that?”

“Hmm?”

“About _Quentin_.”

“Ohh,” slurred Margo. “Yeah, well, since he’s actually here and all. You know, reincarnated and shit? Gang’s getting back together, yaaay.”

Eliot’s breath left him on a quivering, shocked exhale.

All around him, the world grew very quiet, very still. There was that white noise come down upon him again, that empty peace you reached when you’d hit your limit, when your brain and your heart and your body couldn’t contain all the raw emotion inside; when you overloaded on pain and fear to the point you simply could _not_ compute it, shutting down instead in order to adjust, to catch your breath, to find a way to fucking _deal_.

But surely there was no way to deal with this.

“That’s a joke,” he whispered, too quietly for Margo to hear. 

Because it had to be a cosmic joke, didn’t it? Eliot spent a whole afternoon carefully _not_ thinking about going after Q‘s Fillorian doppleganger in the hopes of him being some shadow of reality, of being _enough_. Held out against want and desperation and self-destruction because it was the only choice Eliot could stand to allow himself to make, the only path he could afford to tread. 

And now -- this. 

So it couldn’t be real. Had to be a joke. Had to be a trap or a punishment or -- or _something_.

“Margo,” he said, louder this time. “Margo, that’s -- no. Q’s dead.”

“He was,” Margo agreed easily. “Now he’s… not.”

“That doesn’t make _sense_, Margo!”

Had his voice risen to a scream yet, or was that only the sound of his sanity shattering? Reality was shifting all around him it seemed, dizzying in its sudden disarray. He wanted to scream; he wanted to destroy more clocks or curl back up under his blanket or drink himself into a coma. He wanted to say _No_, but only because of how badly he wanted to say _Yes, he’s here, he’s alive, I can keep him_.

Didn’t Margo understand that this wasn’t fair? That Eliot was too wounded to handle this? _She_ had been the one so aggressively against Imposter Q. _She_ had been vigilant against allowing Eliot to hope, vowing vengeance and letting him cry, letting him grieve, because _Eliot couldn’t have this_. 

So how could he handle anything if Margo was suddenly changing her mind? If Margo of all people claimed--

Eliot stopped. Stopped panicking, stopped being angry, stopped being anything at all. Instead, he let that thought roll through him a moment. Allowed it to fill him up, seeking each inner contour, every hidden crevice and dark hideaway, as he considered:

_Margo_ was saying this.

Margo, who would do anything to protect him. Margo, who he could trust to be suspicious and violent and fiercely defensive. Margo, who refused to believe in anything unless there was a _reason_ to believe.

He worked his jaw a moment for the right words, ones that could take these two conflicting responses within him and make them plain, put them forth to be examined and answered: this couldn’t be real, yet Margo said that it was. 

Which was true? 

Again, Eliot didn’t know. And again, Eliot _needed_ to find out.

“So…” he said carefully, sinking down into that white space for just a little longer; pain and fear and wonder all turning the world blank and empty so that Eliot might have a chance to survive this ordeal. He swallowed, painful through the tightness in his throat, and managed to squeeze out: “You’re saying that… that Quentin’s back. That Quentin’s alive. Is… Is that right?”

“Yeah. Don’t know how to tell you,” Margo murmured, head lolling. “How do I… You’re gonna be so happy, but that’s scary, right? Hope means you can get hurt again. And it’s not… It’s not for sure. Alice said… memories, he might remember, might not. Some sort of… fuck up in hell, or… or whatever. How do I tell you? How…”

She started snoring.

Drunk and exhausted as she was, there would be no waking Margo. But that was fine. 

Eliot didn’t need to press for details. Margo would no doubt wake tomorrow and feel horrified at how she’d let herself go, gotten so drunk she couldn’t even tell Eliot all of her news, let alone in a way that was fucking _helpful_. But Eliot didn’t care -- couldn’t. Because he didn’t need to know absolutely everything, did he? Didn’t need the whole story, didn’t need kindness or carefully worded explanations. 

He knew enough.

And Margo was right -- hope was fucking _terrifying_. 

Eliot raised his hands, palms up, and stared down at them -- the familiar creases and scars, the way the knuckle of his middle fingers protruded, turning them crooked. They were steady in the air, no tremble. But inside, it felt as though his emotions had all broken free and spiraled into a fucking _tornado_, a twister right through the heartlands, ripping up everything in its path until he didn’t know up from down any longer. 

_Quentin is alive_.

He didn’t know if it was really true; he didn’t know if he could trust it. 

More than that, he was _afraid_ to. Afraid of how much he’d shatter if he let himself hope, _really_ hope, only to find it dust in his hands. What did reincarnation even _mean_ outside of romance novels? Eliot had no clue. Could only barely bring himself to focus on Margo’s barely there words about memories and a fuck up in hell. Did that mean Quentin might not ever remember him and their life together? Or that he _would?_

And -- what did any of that matter?

As of three minutes ago, Quentin had been _dead_. Eliot had been alone and pining, grieving his loss and desperately wishing for a second chance at happiness. Now, one had fallen into his lap. If this were true, if Quentin were really here again, _alive_, then what did Eliot care if he never remembered their past, or all the ways that Eliot had broken his heart? Eliot _didn’t_ care, couldn’t begin to try.

Because: _He’d still be Quentin, wouldn’t he?_

And: _If he’s Quentin, then that means I’m going to fall for him all over again, with the real, living, nerdy heart of him. Coldwater or Cogwatcher, how much difference can it make?_

Eliot might miss what they had, the shared memories -- but he was already missing that, wasn’t he? Had already mourned them and buried and them and tried to move on. Even Eliot wasn’t self-destructive enough to give up making a real future with a Fillorian, clock-making Q, over spending the rest of his life with nothing save memories to cling to. 

After all, if this was really Quentin, then Eliot could make _new_ memories with him. 

So, what was he waiting for?

Eliot curled his fingers into fists, let his hands fall. Looked once more out the window at the encroaching night. Even if it were foolish, Eliot’s stupid, melodramatic heart was back to pounding against his ribcage, too fast and frantic, bewildered and uncertain and full of such savagely bright, dangerous _want_. 

No wonder he was hesitating, overwhelmed and reeling. Hope was terrifying and there was no certainty here; even if Margo were telling him that Quentin was alive, she might be wrong. This could all still be a joke or a trap or some fucked up hallucination, and it was somehow easier for Eliot to believe in heartbreak than it was to believe in hope. But if there was even a chance, slender and frayed as it might be, that Quentin was really here... 

Well, then _fuck_ waiting.

Seriously, fuck worrying and fuck burrowing into his own dark thoughts and endless grief. It would have been smarter to wait until morning to speak to Margo once she was sober, to find assurance, to leave no question unanswered. But Eliot had already been afraid for so long. He’d already been devastated; left heartbroken; spurned everything worth fighting for, time and time again; been too much a coward to take a leap of faith, to reach out and grasp Quentin’s offered hand. 

Eliot had a lot of regrets, but here in this moment, that last seemed the only one to matter. He was done running away; time to learn how to run _toward_, instead.

Reaching out for his cane, Eliot used it to help heave himself upright. He struggled out of the furs, off the bedding, and up onto his feet where he swayed a moment, dizzy for too many reasons to count. “I’ll send you a postcard on the honeymoon,” he told Margo, getting only snores in response. “Though if this isn’t -- if it isn’t him --” his breath hitched. 

He shook his head. Terrified and afraid and ready to take the leap anyway, Eliot murmured, “Well, I guess I’m going to find out if miracles actually happen. Wish me luck, Bambi.” 

Now all Eliot needed was to get back to that fucking clock store.

\------------

Underworld Meadows,  
Søren Kierkegaard Station  
\------------------------------------------------

_He was led by his two buddies -- re: the officials, who were very much so not his buddies -- out of the line and away from the turnstiles that would have taken him down to the train platforms, where he could have gone into different parts of Elysian. Or hell, maybe. Hopefully not hell._

_Not that it mattered -- because Quentin was going to be alive again._

_It was funny, because Quentin had thought he’d feel nothing more than unadulterated relief at the thought. And he_ was _relieved, relieved and thrilled and fucking joyous with it. But he also felt... bad. A little sick, a little anxious; a lot overwhelmed with his heart aching in his chest. _

_Because living was a choice. _

_It had always been a choice and a terrifying one at that. But this time, Quentin was choosing himself and the ones he’d left behind, rather than those who were waiting for him here: Teddy, his father, Arielle. It made him feel guilty, like maybe he was letting them down. _

_Despite gods all around, and actual afterlife he was currently in, Quentin didn’t hold much stock in prayers. Still, he sent one out to them if they were listening, guilt-riddled and helpless and sparking with hope:_

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love all of you, I do. But -- you know who I am already. You shouldn’t be surprised. I want -- I _want_ \--

_A hand pressed between his shoulder blades, propelling him forward._

_“In there,” the polite official said, inclining their head toward a nondescript door, propped open at the end of one of the endless hallways. Before he could second guess himself, or the more irritable of the officials could change their mind or shove them again, Quentin stumbled the rest of the way down the hall and peeked inside._

_“This is it?” Quentin asked, wrinkling his nose._

_The room was small and sterile, with a single revolving door set in a glass box, precisely in the center of the floor. A lone technician was at a computer desk off to the side. One of the officials shoved again at his shoulder, pushed Quentin forward fully into the room. _

_“Go on, then,” they said, tone scathing._

_When Quentin glanced back to give them an irritated scowl, both officials were already gone. As was the entrance into the room. _

_Only a seamless white wall stared back at him._

_“Uh,” said Quentin, unnerved despite himself. Still, he shuffled onward, edging around the glass box and its quiescent treasure, toward the desk. “Hi there? Are you who I’m supposed to talk to about --”_

_The technician looked up. Her hair was a cascade of braids that formed some sort of ridged crown over the top of her head, giving her a regal look. Her desk was raised up so she could stand comfortable behind it, and she wore golden, antiquated robes beneath her white lab coat. She was also barefoot. “Hello,” she said, only her mouth formed shapes differently than what Quentin heard in his brain. A translation spell, then. _

_“Hi,” Quentin repeated, more than a tad awkwardly._

_“You’re a little young to be here.”_

_“Special circumstances,” Quentin offered, then coughed and fluttered the paperwork he’d been given out toward her. “I mean -- uh. I was flagged, apparently. By Julia, er -- by a goddess? I get to uhm, do this early. If I want. Which I do want, in case that wasn’t, uh, clear.”_

_“Hmm, interesting,” replied the technician, who did not have a name tag and who Quentin was actually a little afraid to ask the name of. She took his paperwork and skimmed through it. “Very interesting. See here? This notation was made by me, but in the future. Looks like I’ll get to meet your goddess in a few decades. Something to look forward to, perhaps?”_

_“She’s lovely,” Quentin said. “Julia is -- my best friend. Always looking after me, apparently. Even a lifetime after I’ve been dead and gone.”_

_“What are lifetimes to the gods?” the technician said dreamily. Then she turned to her workstation and started inputting Quentin’s data. Quentin leaned to the side a little, trying to get a glimpse, and the numbers and alphabet weren’t anything he knew, and the charts were dizzyingly four-dimensional, and nothing that Quentin was built to understand._

_“Ow,” he said, wiping blood out of his tear ducts. “Huh. So I can still bleed?”_

_“Sure,” agreed the technician, not paying him any attention at all._

_“So how does this work?” Quentin hedged, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt and absolutely not looking back at the screen. Unfortunately, that left him with little else to stare at, since it seemed rude to gawk at the technician. There was just the glass cube and the still revolving door within, and staring at those made him nearly as uncomfortable as the technician did. “Do you like -- do a random algorithm? Or are there moments in history -- uh, the future? -- that are already chosen as needing, uhm, souls? Or uh -- do I get to put in my two cents…?”_

_“Not really,” she said. “It’s all here already. Everything you ever loved and wanted and failed to get. All the things you are capable of, even those you aren’t aware of. The place you’re best suited to be next. Usually a soul elects for reincarnation because they’ve reached a point in their karmic cycle where they’re prepared to do some good once more. Heroes more often than others, those who have something extra special to give.”_

_“...Ah.”_

_“You weren’t a very good hero,” she murmured, examining something on her impossible graphs. “But sometimes the world needs those the most. Oh, hello. Here you are. Sorry, our systems have been a bit of a mess lately. No one has seen Persephone in eons it feels like, but it’s never been this bad. We even put in a work order for the Library but they seem to be ignoring us right now.”_

_Huh._

_Quentin might know a thing or two about why things were out of sorts, but -- why rock the boat, when he was about to set sail on a new quest? Still, it was hard not to offer something to her, at least._

_He settled on saying, “Well, uh. There were a couple of gods recently running around topside killing other gods, so -- not that I’m saying she’s dead!” Quentin yelped. “Persephone could be -- uh, could be fine? I mean I don’t -- I don’t know anything really. The monster, he -- he killed more than I ever saw, but. Julia -- Our Lady of the Tree -- had a special sort of uh, I guess in a fucked up way you could call it a relationship? With uhm, Persephone. Our Lady of the Underground. So when you see her --”_

_“-- I’ll be sure to ask,” said the technician, staring at Quentin with ancient, warm brown eyes. “Thanks. Now, shall we get you on your way? I do feel I should warn you -- considering our system lag and the random malfunction, I cannot promise that this will go as seamlessly as it should.”_

_“What --”_

_“Perhaps you would like to wait a few decades until this has all been resolved?” she asked._

_Quentin tried not to rip out his hair. “I don’t -- I don’t want to wait!” he said, exasperated. But also, “What kind of issues are you talking about?”_

_She shrugged, completely unbothered by Quentin’s outburst. “You may not be reborn correctly. The machine seals everything about your past life during the process, creating a new you -- one that at the core may be exactly the same, but is clean, pure, ready to be molded anew. With the way the program has been behaving lately -- I can’t promise you a clean start. There may be -- echoes.”_

_“Echoes,” Quentin breathed, marveling._

_“Echoes,” she agreed. “Fragments of your past that you remember. In dreams, perhaps.”_

_Fuck yes._

_“You seem excited,” she said, tilting her head in something almost like curiosity. “Why? Just because you might remember what you’ve lost doesn’t mean you’ll gain it again. It would exist only in your mind. And its more probable you may never remember, let alone fully -- like I said: echoes. They’re liable to be nothing more than mere shadows, impressions. Something to haunt your subconscious.”_

_“That’s okay,” said Quentin, thinking of card tricks and sleight of hand, of risking everything on a gamble time and time again. “I’ve always been good at cheating. All you need is one moment -- one chance, and the game might be yours to win. I’m ready.”_

_“Okay,” she said. “Go through that, then, if you’re so determined.” She pointed at the solitary structure of the revolving door, still and alone and leading seemingly nowhere. As he watched a panel of the glass cube surrounding it disappeared, as though it had never been, allowing him entrance. _

_Determined? Hell yeah, he was. _

_Quentin was determined and frightened and hopeful. All these emotions still alive in him. He still didn’t know if he was a coward at heart, afraid to die and be left behind, or if this kind of running away meant that he was brave instead, constantly fighting, even when he should by all rights be allowed to stop, to rest, to move on. He couldn’t be certain if he was playing into the wrong hands or the right ones, or what the deck might deal him on the other side; he didn’t know if this would be worth it in the end. _

_“Well?”_

_Nervous, Quentin shifted on his feet. He cleared his throat. Said, “Wish me luck,” and bit nervously at his lip, hard enough to hurt._

_“Which kind? Bad, good? You’re lucky I’m not a trickster god.”_

_Quentin grimaced, releasing his lip. He took one step, then another. “Right, yeah. Okay, I’m -- I’m gonna go. I’m going.” _

_Each step he took was easier than the last._

_Because he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t give in, give up, not when he had a chance for more. No, he had to believe in impossible things. He was a magician, a hero, and a King of Fillory. He was a father and a grandfather; he had loved and been loved, countless times, in countless ways. And he was greedy. _

_He was so greedy, because he didn’t want it to end, not yet. And thankfully, because Julia had given him this chance, this trick he might play to cheat death if he were only stubborn and desperate enough to look for it, he could. _

_So he did._

_He walked through the revolving door into another life, another time._

_Another chance._


	7. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you read the last ch when i first posted it, know that i edited and added to the end of eliot's final scene in there a couple of days later
> 
> more trigger warnings for child abuse/molestation, implied, off screen, and also briefly on screen there's a known pedophile who touches a child and the child is afraid

  
  


#### EPILOGUE

\------------

The Kingdom of Fillory, Fillory  
Shadowspire City  
Cogwatcher’s Watches, Cogs, & Other Things  
\------------------------------------------------------------

When Quentin was young he’d been absolutely _convinced_ that his destiny was to become a master magician. “Just watch,” he told his best friend the summer he was nine. “I’m going to become so powerful and go on adventures, just like in the stories you read me!”

Jay wrinkled her nose. “Or we could just keep reading the stories?”

At that, Quentin rolled his eyes. He and Jay were out in the meadow, a stone’s throw from the town where his maternal grandparents lived. When Quentin was seven and his parents split up, his mother had moved them all the way out into the countryside to be close to her parents. Quentin had hated it at first because the country was no decent replacement for a city. Or at least, that’s what his father always shouted when arguing with his mother about who got to keep Quentin. But Jay made up for it, especially since Quentin hadn’t had any friends in the city. 

“I don’t think it’d be very fun,” Jay said, still wrinkling her nose. “Living with -- you know, _him_.”

Quentin ripped up some grass and threw it at her. “What are you talking about? It would be the best! Don’t you want to do something? Life here is so boring. We get up every day, do our chores, eat supper, and go to bed! I want to slay dragons and -- and rescue princesses and all sorts of other cool things!”

Jay, now with grass all over her hair and face, ripped up a chunk of earth to return the favor. Quentin was too busy daydreaming about victoriously completing quests to notice until it hit him in the forehead.

“Ow!”

“If you become a court magician, you wouldn’t be able to see me again,” Jay said. 

Quentin stuck his tongue out at her. “Good riddance!”

He hadn’t actually meant it, of course. But he _had_ meant it about the adventure and power and magic. They were all the sorts of things that fascinated him the most; much better than chores or learning how to fix old clocks, which was all his mother and father ever wanted him to do. As soon as Quentin was taught about the Chosen Ones, he _knew_ he’d join their ranks. 

It was his destiny, even if no one ever believed him.

Jay grabbed at his hand, linking fingers. “Do you really want to be important? Can’t you be satisfied with what you have?”

“Boring,” Quentin laughed, holding tight to Jay’s hand and pulling her up and away. They ran through the flowers and the bees and the gnats until they were breathless, until the conversation was left forgotten, and then Jay pulled out one of her books and they settled down in the roots of a tree until evening came. But when his tenth summer came Quentin still knew it was his destiny.

“You’ve always suffered from flights of fancy,” his mother muttered, lips pursed, the morning of the Nubile Presenting. Quentin had been busy telling her all the different things in his room he’d like shipped to him once he was Chosen. 

“_Mom_,” Quentin complained. “I know I’m magic!”

“I certainly hope _not_,” she said, and finished getting him ready with a viciousness so startling that Quentin fell silent, feeling bewildered and sullen about the bewilderment. But in short order he didn’t care about his mother’s fussing any longer. He was garbed in his best clothes, his hair washed and face scrubbed, and all that was left was to wait for the wagon in the center of town, which was already crowded. There were three boys who’d reached their tenth year that summer, and it seemed as though the whole village had come out to see them off.

Jay was lingering on the fringes. “What are you doing all the way over here?” Quentin asked, as soon as he could sneak her way.

In response, Jay wrapped her arms about herself, shivering. “Everyone’s so tense. Can’t you feel it, Q?”

“Don’t be weird. They’re not tense, it’s excitement!” he said, bouncing on his toes. “Look, I gotta get back or mom will yell at me again. Wish me luck?”

“Hm.”

Quentin was probably excited enough for the whole village. It was difficult for him to focus, too caught up in imagining what his life would soon be like. The sun was shining brightly and he _wished_ there were trumpets playing or something else equally grand to commemorate his meeting his heroic destiny, but still, Quentin _did_ take note of Jay’s strangeness. 

The bold, laughing girl he’d played with for the last three years was nowhere to be seen. Instead her face was pale and serious when she said, “Q, come here.”

“Why?” Quentin asked, still too excited to be more than vaguely puzzled. But still, he shuffled up before her anyway and didn’t fuss as she reached up, grabbing him about the head to hold him still. “What are you--”

Jay kissed him on the forehead; it tingled.

“Stay safe, Q,” she said, very quiet. “I love you.”

“Gross,” Quentin laughed, pushing her off him. He thought he understood: only boys could be Chosen Ones. Jay must think that he wasn’t just going to go away, but also going to _forget_ her. “Don’t worry. I won’t forget about you when I’m at court! I’ll have the Dark King send for you so you can be my companion! How’s that? We can stay together at Whitespire!”

“Q…”

Quentin gave her a quick hug. “I mean it, Jay! Everything will work out, okay?”

Jay smiled, though it was still in that strange, unhappy way. She didn’t agree, either, only waved at him silently as he hurried back to his mother’s side, who was irate all over again at having lost him in the first place. “You foolish child,” she hissed, scrubbing his face for imaginary dirt. “It’s horrible enough that this is happening, but the very _least_ you can do is be presentable. The punishment alone…”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “_Relax_, mom, I’ll be fine!”

“You still think he’ll keep you, don’t you?”

“Yes! I dream of magic,” Quentin told her, mulish. “Things I’ve never seen, impossible things! That means I’m special, doesn’t it? And it’s so _boring_ here.”

“An overactive imagination, that’s all it is,” she murmured back, pursed lips tightening into a tense line. 

But that was normal. She always got annoyed when Quentin complained of being bored, or talked about how much better the world in his dreams seemed -- full of strange, winged contraptions hung on string; a woman that crackled with blue energy; a city that didn’t exist, gray all over and with towering buildings, taller even than Whitespire in the sky.

Quentin knew he was special. Thank goodness he was, too, or life would be unbearable. After all, he had only the one friend and he hated it in the country but he hated the city even more, where absolutely _no one_ liked him; where he was _weird_ and _strange_ and not as attentive or learned as the others in his class and his father made him learn all about _clocks_.

Clocks were absolutely the dumbest thing invented, Quentin was quite certain.

So he _had_ to become a magician chosen by the Dark Lord. It was the only option; that would explain why Quentin didn’t have anywhere else he fit. Why the only joy he had was listening to Jay tell fantastical stories about long ago quests and magical lands far away. 

He was meant for greater things. 

When the wagon came through to collect him and the other two boys, Quentin clambered into it with a light heart. 

The journey only took an hour, aided by a magic spell. When Quentin and the other boys arrived at Whitespire they’d been taken to a room with a lot of _other_ boys from all across Fillory. All of them were told to undress and get into a big pool set into the floor, the water hot enough it was steaming. Once they were clean, they were scrubbed down by servants with big fluffy towels, dressed in light robes, and then fed the most delicious meal Quentin had ever eaten in his _life_.

One thin, narrow-faced boy down the table started crying halfway through. 

When some of the other boys looked at him he admitted in a quiet, miserable tone: “I want to go home. I miss my dog.” 

It set several other of the children off, muttering about being homesick, about the weird bath, the servants, how much they missed this or that animal, their parents, their sisters or brothers. How they were scared and how their parents had been scared and how they just wanted to go home already, to leave this place behind them.

Quentin couldn’t understand it. 

_I’m going to live here_, he told himself. 

The halls already felt familiar, as though Quentin had finally come home. There was no space in him for fears or doubts when it suddenly felt like everything _fit_, like Quentin was finally in the place he belonged. He knew better than to say anything though; everyone in the city had hated him whenever Quentin talked about his dreams, so these sad boys probably wouldn’t like learning about his destiny either. They weren’t special like him, or they wouldn’t be so afraid. 

Quentin ate his dinner silently and then, when the servants came to collect them for the ceremony in the throne room, Quentin followed eagerly. He was first through the doors, first to see the Dark King on his massive throne, four ancient chairs in a row behind him. Quentin knew the story there, of course: how the Dark King had slain the rotten Kings of Old in order to restore balance to Fillory. He kept them there as a reminder, it was said, of how great power might corrupt.

Standing just behind the Immortal’s throne were two young men in gauzy white robes and gold jewelry, hands clasped and heads bowed. Chosen Ones, Quentin realized, delighted. _That will be me soon, that will be me!_

Of course, such certainty didn’t keep _all_ his nerves at bay. The servants kept them from getting too close, each boy meant to walk the length of the room to stand before the Dark King alone, their words kept secret by distance. Quentin couldn’t get a good enough look at the Chosen Ones or the Dark King himself, and he was fidgeting madly trying to stand still and wait for his turn. By the time they got close to Quentin’s name his palms were sweating, heart racing madly.

And then the herald announced, “Quentinatick Cogwatcher, Your Majesty!”

After dinner, no one had given them different clothing to dress in; they were still in the flowing white robes they’d donned after their bath, and Quentin had been _certain_ that he would trip over the hem. But despite the adrenaline rushing through him Quentin managed to shuffle forward without tripping -- a good sign, he thought, though the length of the throne room suddenly seemed three times its actual distance. 

Quentin walked forward, trying to remember that this was his _destiny_.

Surely the Dark King would want him. Would be able to tell with just one glance that Quentin dreamed of magic and impossible things, that he had a hero’s soul. Would keep Quentin here in his fortress as he did all the Chosen Ones, the young boys with powerful potential he liked best and doted upon for years to come until they finally learned enough to become his master magicians.

_Please like me_, Quentin begged as he finally stumbled to a stop at the foot of the Dark King’s dais, eyes on his feet to keep from tripping. He went down onto both knees awkwardly, bowing deeply as he was meant to. 

“Raise your head, little one,” came the voice of Fillory’s ruler, their Immortal King.

“Yes, your-- your majesty,” Quentin squeaked.

Face red with embarrassment at how he was shaking and _shaking_ with nerves, Quentin raised his head and looked straight at his king for the first time. He couldn’t help but stare: he seemed achingly familiar, just like the halls of Whitespire did. All at once, Quentin’s stomach flipped, turning queasy.

“There now,” smiled the Dark One. “Aren’t you sweet. And you’re trembling!” 

The king was so much _closer_ than Quentin had expected. Close enough that Quentin not only saw a man with white hair and glasses, thin and kind looking, but also the marks of his majesty: on brow and cheeks the strange, miraculous tracery of magical sigils, marks denoting his defeat of age, of illness, of time.

It was dizzying looking at him. 

Quentin gulped for air; flinched when the Immortal’s hand reached out to steady him.

“Are you alright, dear?”

“L-Lord,” Quentin squeaked again. “I-- I--”

The Dark King’s eyes narrowed, studying him. In a panic, Quentin tried to get back to his feet, to-- to bow again or scuttle away or go hide somewhere never to be found again, because destiny or no he was _terrible_ at things like this. Only the robe got in the way, as did Quentin’s own flailing nature, and instead of standing he managed to fall backward onto his butt. “Ow,” Quentin whimpered.

And then, to his surprise, the Immortal rose from his throne and stepped down to him, going slowly to one knee. Close enough to smell, close enough for Quentin to see the wrinkles of his brow, the creases at the corners of his eyes; close enough to feel his breath stirring Quentin’s hair. 

Quentin froze.

“Up you get now,” the Immortal said, sounding as though he were trying not to laugh. “Let’s see -- oh, you’re strong, aren’t you?” he asked, squeezing at Quentin’s thin shoulders before moving his hands down Quentin’s arms in a slow, lingering sweep.

“Um...”

The Dark One laughed gently, raising one of his hands to lift Quentin’s chin, tilting it to and fro as though to examine his face from all angles. Over the Immortal’s shoulder Quentin saw one of the Chosen Ones, saw--

The Dark King turned his head away, staring at him intently. “You...somehow remind me of someone I knew once, long ago.”

Quentin blinked, terrified, which -- he didn’t understand what was going on, not at all.

He wasn’t supposed to be _terrified_. 

He was meeting the Dark King, ruler of Fillory for three centuries, and it was all Quentin had been longing for, dreaming about, but-- but something was _wrong_, strange, different from what Quentin had expected. Because instead of feeling joyous, Quentin was only cold and mostly naked and his tailbone hurt from where he’d just fallen and the Dark King was still touching him and he didn’t _want_ to be touched and this-- 

This was no longer the magical homecoming he’d been expecting.

And more than that, Quentin realized: _I’m afraid of him_.

Almost involuntarily, Quentin’s gaze met the Immortal’s. There was a _spark_, a flare of recognition, and all at once the hands on Quentin became brutal, punishing. “What--” Quentin tried to ask, but he was so scared that he couldn’t speak and it felt all at once as though he’d sick up if he opened his mouth even one more time. Silence fell. The Dark One kept staring at him, hands like steel to shackle Quentin in place. Then:

“Oh.”

The voice that had been so kind before, so solicitous, went -- strange. “_Oh_. I see it now. The mark and-- Yes, I know you. I _know_ you, boy. Don’t think you can hide from me, you-- not this one!” he called out to a guard, pushing Quentin away. 

Quentin fell to his side, crying out. 

In mere seconds, he was caught in the iron-grip of the dark and silent guards all around.

The Immortal stood up with a faint groan, then stared down at Quentin, smiling. “I don’t know how you did it,” he murmured. “But it won’t do you any good. This is my world, now.” 

Then, lifting his head to all who stood near -- the Lords and Ladies of Fillory, Animal and Human both, who stood witness for the Nubile Presenting each year, as well as the guards and the other children -- said, “This child is to be pitied, for he will never amount to anything. He is neither good nor pure enough to ever merit my favor, and there is hardly any magic to him. What is his name?”

A rustle, and then the herald who’d announced him said haltingly, “Quentinatick Cogwatcher, Your Grace.”

The Dark King snorted, looking amused. “Yes, well -- little Quentin here will never be a hero, never be the protagonist of anyone’s story. He is _not_ a Chosen One. Send him back, let the records show his fate, and further let it be known that if any Questing Creature dare consider him for a task they will be executed without mercy.”

Quentin hadn’t known what to do hearing all of this, confused and afraid and suddenly so very, _very_ alone, trying his hardest not to cry. Because this wasn’t _right_. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go! His destiny, the dreams -- the strange things he’d seen while asleep! -- surely that had to mean something. And the Immortal had said he _knew_ him, as if-- 

Nothing made sense, least of all the relief Quentin felt being led out of the room.

And so he’d gone back home, disgraced and ashamed. His mother had taken it in stride, furious and triumphant, saying, “I told you, you’re nothing more than naive and fanciful! Too active in the brain about the worst things. Now, back to real life, hm?”

But what did any of it matter?

If Quentin couldn’t be a Chosen One, then what was there? Nothing, nothing at all.

What was worse was that, when Quentin finally left the house to track down Jay, to tell her that he’d been wrong, that he wasn’t special, that he had no great destiny, she wasn’t anywhere to be found. No one could tell him where she’d gone, and soon it’d been days since he’d seen her, then weeks, then _months_.

Quentin didn’t handle it well. 

Eventually, his mother couldn’t handle _him_ either. “Come now, go to your father in the city. I can’t have you here, now can I? You won’t speak to anyone, you won’t do your chores -- you’re scaring me. Your father and I agree a change of pace will be good for you.”

Quentin hadn’t wanted to go, but then: he didn’t want anything at all anymore.

In the city, he had no friends. He had only his father who didn’t understand him, who said, “I’ll teach you everything you need to know. You’ll have a good life here, just as I have. You’re a Cogwatcher! It’s your destiny to take over the family business when I’m gone.”

“Destiny, huh?” Quentin sighed.

“You’ll love it,” his father told him, but Quentin knew he wouldn’t. Still, he had nothing else to do, no where else to go, no one else to turn toward. There was only his father in the city and the clocks he’d learn to build and repair.

So many _fucking_ clocks.

And so, after Quentin’s tenth summer he grew up knowing that he wasn’t worth anything. That he was small and unwanted. He knew the world was a big, beautiful place, full of adventure and happiness for everyone else and absolutely nothing at all for him. When he finally learned his discipline at the age of fifteen -- mender of small objects -- it suited. 

A menial skill for a menial person.

No wonder the Dark King hadn’t wanted him. No wonder Jay had abandoned him. No wonder his mother hadn’t wanted him and he couldn’t make friends. He was boring. Utterly boring and the dreams were meaningless, just stupid fancies as his mother had told him before, and he should forget about them, absolutely forget all about them. Only--

After he turned sixteen, the dreams changed.

No wonder the Immortal had said he wasn’t pure enough.

Because Quentin didn’t just dream of dancing horses made of light and glass, or cities never known to him. No, now he dreamed of foxes fornicating in the snow and of a screaming man with severed hands; of moths and killing gods and gods killing; of feeling blood and bone break under his hands, under his skin, and-- 

A man with darkly dreaming eyes.

_Eliot_, who had a mouth that twisted wryly, words that cut and wounded, hands that held and cherished, that changed with age but still reached for Quentin so sweetly, so greedily, time and time again, until Quentin woke up gasping, squirming in his bed sheets, so hard and aching he thought he would _burst_.

Gods, what was _wrong_ with him.

Quentin hadn’t understood at sixteen. Could only guess that it was one more wrong and broken thing about him, but he-- he liked the dreams. Especially _those_ dreams, the ones about El and Teddy, the ones where Quentin felt safe and happy and content. Quentin had forgotten what that felt like, but in his dreams he remembered. 

In his dreams, Quentin was _loved_.

“I worry about you,” his father said when Quentin was twenty. “All you ever do is stay at home and read. Don’t you want to go out, make friends or even find a girlfriend?”

“Maybe I don’t like girls,” Quentin muttered into his book.

“Well that’s-- that’s uh--”

Quentin sighed. “I like girls, dad. Don’t worry.”

He didn’t say: _It’s just that I’m in love with the man who lives inside my head and I don’t really feel like sharing that with anyone. Or being let down when reality doesn’t compare. I already know it doesn’t._

“This isn’t healthy,” his father told him two years ago, sick and worried about Quentin and all the ways he’d locked up his heart, thrown away the key. And maybe his dad had been right. Maybe Quentin should have ignored the dreams; should have spurned them and cursed them as the cause for all his current problems, all the reasons he felt so inadequate, so filled with wanting for _more_. 

But Quentin couldn’t.

So when that man -- _Eliot_ \-- appeared before Quentin as if cast directly from his dreams into flesh and bone and devastating reality, he-- he didn’t know what to think. Who to ask. Where to turn.

Because no one cared about Quentinatick Cogwatcher, now did they?

No, they didn’t. 

After all, his dad was dead and he rarely spoke to his mother these days; he hadn’t bothered to make any friends here in the city even after all these years trapped here, and the only true friend he’d ever had was probably just a figment of his imagination, gone once the reality of the world, of Quentin’s own inadequacies, became miserably, irrevocably apparent.

So, no one was left to care. 

And it seemed as though El didn’t either, since he took one look at Quentin and just-- broke all of his fucking clocks. Seriously, who the fuck _did_ that?

The love of Quentin’s fucking _life_, it would seem.

The sign on his shop door turned to CLOSED, Quentin clutched at his chest, feeling not unlike the wreckage on his floor -- scattered and splintered, all the secrets revealed. Because it figured, didn’t it? That Quentin couldn’t even keep his _dreams_, painful and shackling and wonderful as they were. Gods, he just-- he wanted to break down and sob, because Quentin had felt for most of his life like one of the broken things that needed mending, but no one ever could, _nothing_ could. 

But the dreams had helped. The dreams had been something he could turn to, could cling to, every time he was reminded that he’d been wrong: that there wasn’t anything special about him, that there wasn’t going to be anything better waiting for him on the horizon, no great destiny his to claim.

So it just fucking figured that the only good thing in Quentin’s stupid, idiotic little life would take one look at him and _destroy_ all of his clocks. Reality was never kind; Quentin wasn’t really surprised to find it true in this matter.

But it still _hurt_.

“Gods fucking damn it all,” he muttered, rubbing wearily at his eyes behind his glasses. 

At least the debris on the floor was helping to keep him relatively calm. As far as he knew there wasn’t anyone else in all of Fillory who had dreamed of lives lived with a significant other and then actually found them. There was no precedent; only fanciful musings, romantic tales told in books. Quentin knew that El probably wasn’t even really _El_. 

More likely just a-- just a strange coincidence, a lookalike who had taken one look at Quentin and acted as if he knew him too, acted as though he _hated_ him, who had called him darling and hissed threats at him with dark and wounded eyes that somehow had the power to make Quentin’s knees week and his stomach flip and his chest get hot and strange with longing. 

He had to blink back tears that were wetting his lashes, throat squeezing tight. That this Eliot could know him should be _impossible_. 

Impossible, and yet Quentin still couldn’t shake the feeling as if he _knew_ him, knew Eliot and the woman he’d been with, _Margo_. He thought maybe he’d dreamed of her as well, but Quentin’s dreams ever since he was sixteen were mostly of El and Quentin in a cottage in the woods, domestic and horny in equal turn, their hands shuffling tiles and holding babies and each other and--

_It’s not him_, Quentin told himself sternly. _It’s not him, it’s just someone who looks like him and talks like him and throws a fucking hissy fit like him and-- and it can’t fucking be him so you-- you need to stop it, just stop it now and you need to clean up these stupid clocks and stop thinking that there’s any world in which you might be happy, you fucking idiot!_

And then, because his life truly sucked, someone knocked on the front door.

“It says closed, asshole!” he called out, knowing they would be able to hear it through the old door, crooked in its frame.

“Who the fuck cares?” Eliot hollered back. “I need to talk to you!”

Quentin tripped over absolutely nothing, all the blood draining from his face in a dizzying rush. Because _no_, fuck no. Absolutely not, this wasn’t happening. 

Hadn’t Quentin just established that El was _impossible_, that this entire _situation_ was impossible? He had, but the problem was that Quentin wanted it to be real so badly that it _hurt_, so he panicked and yelled, “No!” and then, “Go away, you broke all my clocks!” like that mattered at _all_ when the impossible man of Quentin’s literal dreams was outside his door demanding entrance.

El snorted, muttered something that Quentin couldn’t catch, and then tried to turn the door handle. He made a frustrated noise when the lock kept it from budging. “Don’t make me magic this open!”

“Don’t you _dare_,” Quentin snapped.

“Why are you always so _difficult_, I-- I just--”

“_I’m_ difficult?” Quentin asked, bewildered. Before he even realized it, he’d stomped his way through all the cogs and springs and broken wood, so he could better glare at Eliot through the door’s glass paneling. “_You’re_ the one who’s always difficult!”

Quentin’s breath caught, his own words catching up to him. 

His _and_ Eliot’s, as if they truly knew each other. As if somehow the impossible actually _were_ possible. Silence swelled between them, thick and tremulous. In his chest, Quentin’s heart pounded, a sickly beat threaded through with fear.

Eliot said, “Q… My name is Eliot. We… we met earlier. Sort of. And I’m sorry about the clocks, all right? I mean, I’m not _really_ sorry about the clocks, but-- but I just-- could you _please_ open this damned door so that I can speak with you face to face? I would… I would really like to speak with you, Q.”

“I know who you are,” muttered Q, squeezing his eyes shut tight at the way Eliot sounded, so strained and crackling, as if he were as bewildered and frightened and out of sorts as Quentin was.

Eliot asked, “What was that?” and then jiggled the door handle again. 

Quentin’s eyes flew open. Panic seized him and had him stumbling back, away from the door and the possibility that Eliot might open it, that Quentin might have to face him. “Do _not_ use magic!”

“...Fine,” came Eliot’s ragged voice, and this was ridiculous, _ridiculous_. The glass in the door was old and looking through it was like looking underwater, all wavering and distorted. So Q couldn’t really see Eliot, just the impression of him, but he was _there_, on the other side of the door and _real_. 

No matter how impossible it should have been, everything about this exchange screamed at Quentin, clamoring that the man from his dreams was really _here_, wanted to speak with him, wanted--

Fuck, Quentin didn’t know. If it was anything like what Quentin wanted, then Eliot wanted _everything_. Quentin didn’t know how to fucking handle this at all.

“In that case, you leave me no choice,” Eliot warned, and then a heavy banging started up on the wooden part of the door. 

“The _fuck_,” Quentin blurted.

“I can do this all day!” Eliot called out. “Just bang on your door with my cane until it either breaks or you let me in or you-- you come out here! Come on, Q, just-- please--” his voice broke, but Eliot kept speaking, that gorgeous, rough sound twisting deep in Quentin’s chest, so familiar and strange and utterly devastating, “--I need to know, Q. I need to know if you’re _real_. Because I want it-- I want you to be. _Fuck_, Quentin, I can’t tell you how much--”

“I’m real,” Quentin said, staring at the door, at the lock, at Eliot’s wavering image through the glass. “I’m real, but you-- you can’t be. _This_ can’t be happening. Can it?”

“Supposedly, you’re just as stubborn in death as you are in life,” Eliot laughed, the sound breathless and wet. 

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

Eliot laughed again, all thick and choked and quiet, and now Quentin was nearly certain that the man was crying on the other side of that door. He said in a murmur just loud enough to be heard, “Quentin. Sweetheart, _please_. Let me in.”

Oh, how Quentin _wanted_ to. 

But Quentin had wanted other things in his life, grand things, great things, and none of that had ever worked out, had it? He’d lost his faith in destiny, his trust in hope. Quentin knew better the reality of the world, grim and gritty and miserable. This couldn’t be his. It couldn’t.

But his chest hurt, a blossom of pain so sharp and bright and vibrant. Quentin didn’t want to lose that new and wonderful feeling that felt so achingly like hope, and more: he didn’t want to lose Eliot, not if there was actually a chance of keeping him.

“I’m afraid you’ll disappear if I open the door,” he admitted.

“_Darling_, I won’t--”

“I’m afraid of wanting anything at all,” Quentin babbled, turning from the door and reaching up to scrub at his face again, glasses gone askew. “And I’m-- I’m afraid to lose the one fucking shitty happiness I have left, you know? Because you’re all I’ve had for so long. I don’t-- Look, you can’t be real, because if you’re real then it-- it might stop being good. It might explode in my face like everything does, I’ll ruin it, I’ll fucking--”

“Ruining things is usually my job,” Eliot drawled through the door, and now it sounded as though the tears had stopped. Quentin dropped his hands and turned back, only to see that Eliot had raised a hand to press against the glass, reaching out to him. 

“I don’t…”

“Damn it, Q, you’re the bravest person I know! So don’t turn coward now, don’t _run_ from me. Open the door.”

Quentin had never wanted anything more, and it wouldn’t stop _terrifying_ him.

Desperate, and entirely uncertain what else to try, Quentin closed his eyes tightly and whispered, “Goddess, if you’re there, if you’re real-- Our Lady of the Trees, please. Help me out?” and this, too, was one of the stupider things he’d ever done, because Quentin knew who he was -- and who he _wasn’t_, which was anyone of importance. 

Gods and goddesses wouldn’t deign to answer the call of boring, below average people, weird dreams or not. There was no reason for Quentin to be heard, less reason for him to be answered, but he didn’t know what to _do_, and--

Everything stopped.

The sound of Eliot’s renewed knocking, the clocks in the back of the shop that were ticking, the very air in the room.

It all stopped.

Slowly, Quentin opened his eyes and found, standing between him and the still closed door, an old woman in a tattered gray dress that matched the loose spirals of her hair. A dirty blindfold covered her eyes and her mouth was quirked into a smile that looked...surprisingly fond?

“Holy fuck,” breathed Quentin, and then he dropped to his knees, shocked senseless.

“You always were one with words, Q,” the goddess said, voice warm and soft. “Come, raise your head, get on your feet. I don’t like all this bowing, gives me the heebie jeebies.”

Before he could stop himself, Quentin looked up and asked, “The what?”

The goddess’ smile turned into a full-fledged grin. Reaching up, she pulled the blindfold from her head, revealing half-lidded, brilliantly blue eyes that seemed achingly, troublingly familiar. “Earth term,” she said. “You knew it once.”

“_What_.”

And that wasn’t, in fact, at _all_ how you were meant to speak to a goddess. But before Quentin could panic, the goddess of Fillory -- Our Lady of the Tree -- laughed aloud and started to glow, a pure, soft, golden light, and then came a sound as of the branches of an ancient oak creaking in the wind, and between one blink and the next Quentin was no longer staring at an old woman, but a young one near his age, no longer glowing and no longer strange.

“You--” Quentin stuttered, reeling. “You’re--”

“Hey, Q,” said Julia, who lived in his dreams. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

\---

Somehow or another, Cogwatcher’s Watches, Cogs, & Other Things was no more.

In its place was a home unlike any he’d seen, save when he slept. It was an apartment, and it had belonged to Julia, once. Quentin remembered a little, but mostly he knew because Julia said, “It’s been such a long time since I saw this place. This was my home for a while, Q, back on Earth when you were still alive.”

“When I was… alive.”

“Yes,” said the goddess, curled up on a couch. Hesitant, Quentin curled up on the other end of it, mirroring her. “You lived a long time ago. Here, have some coffee. I may or may not have included a shot of whiskey. I think you might need it.”

Like magic, a mug of hot coffee was suddenly steaming in his hands.

“Whoa,” Quentin said, lifting it. “That’s… wow. I wish I could do that.”

Julia said, “You can. You really, really can, Q. And as much as I would love to keep you here for a long time, to talk and talk like we used to, I can’t. The world can only be paused for so long, and there’s too much to say, too many things you need to know. So I hope you won’t mind that I’m also, er… Well, I’m fucking with your mind a bit.”

Quentin choked on the coffee. “W-what? What do you _mean_\--”

“It’s not the first time I’ve done it,” Julia admitted, something like shame tightening her expression. “But this is for a good reason, I promise. I’m just. Going to help you accept what I’m saying a little easier than you would otherwise.”

“I don’t need--”

“You’re a bit stubborn,” Julia interrupted, grinning. “And you want to know _everything_. You just have to get to the bottom of it all, to _know_, and you’re not satisfied with half-answers. I know you, Q. You’d argue, you’d fight, because nothing in your life has ever come easily to you, and so you distrust things that might make you happy.”

Quentin stared. “Well that’s… not a kind summary of my psyche, thanks.”

Julia lifted one shoulder in a shrug, still looking amused. Quentin realized what she meant, in that moment, how easily he was accepting things. He sipped at his coffee, made just how he liked it, when before this moment he’d never had a cup of coffee before, or even knew it to be more than a figment of his imagination. Fillory didn’t brew coffee, after all.

And then there was Julia herself. She was so wonderfully familiar, the best friend he’d dreamed of having, once, that he’d known couldn’t be real. Yet here she was, and somehow Quentin _wasn’t_ freaking out about any of it, wasn’t asking her every question he could think of, wasn’t pacing the floor and running his hands through his own hair in agitation, trying to grasp hold of it all.

He wasn’t even panicking about Eliot now, or at least, not as badly as before.

“Fine,” he said. “Fuck with my mind. Tell me I have-- have _real_ magic, not just tricks to fix clocks. Sure, why not. I’ll go with it.”

“For now,” Julia snorted.

Quentin smiled. “Yes. For now.”

For a moment, neither one of them said anything else. They simply sat on the couch, smiling at each other. It was strange, but Quentin liked it. He thought maybe this was what it would have been like if he’d had friends -- if he had ever tried. If he was really stubborn like Julia claimed he was.

“You’re frowning,” Julia said.

“Oh. Am I? Sorry, it’s-- the way you talked about me,” Quentin admitted. “It doesn’t really sound like me, now that I’m thinking of it. I haven’t… I’m not a fighter. I’m not… anything at all, really.”

Julia’s eyes narrowed. 

Quentin looked into the swirling darkness of his coffee, shrugging a bit awkwardly. “Sorry, but… it’s true.”

“That’s not the Q that I remember.”

Snorting, Quentin took another bracing sip. “Yeah, well. The me you remember is dead, right?”

“No,” said a little girl. “I knew you in this life too.”

Startled, Quentin jerked his head up, nearly spilling his coffee all over his lap. Made as it was by a goddess, it hadn’t cooled down from its perfectly scalding temperature. But Quentin wasn’t certain he’d have cared even if he _did_ spill it all over his crotch, because there across from him sitting on the couch wasn’t Julia anymore, but--

“Jay,” he whispered.

“You’ve always been my best friend, Q,” Jay smiled. Only it wasn’t really _Jay_ was it? It was J for Julia all along. Her smile got bigger as she said, “What happened to all that talk about your great destiny? Going on adventures and quests and saving princesses?”

“You _left_.”

Julia’s eyes turned downcast, smile slipping. Her image wavered, and this time Quentin witnessed it as she shifted from little girl to young woman, still so achingly familiar. “I know. I had to. I may be a goddess but… I’m not all powerful. I can be killed, hurt, hunted. _Used_. I knew that he might realize who you were, so I cast a protection spell on you. It was a gamble, because even if he _didn’t_ realize who you were he’d notice _that_, but… I had to do something to protect you from _him_.”

Quentin clutched at his mug, wriggling to sit up straighter on the couch. “_What_. Who are you talking about?”

“Christopher Plover, otherwise known as The Dark King,” Julia said, expression souring. “An old nemesis of ours.”

Helplessly, Quentin detached one clutching hand to point at himself. “When you say ours…”

Julia nodded. “Oh, yes. You hate him very much. And he’s the reason that you’ve been born into this time, this place. Fillory needed a hero now, when you might do some good. And since you had a bloodline here you were able to be reincar--”

“I really think you might need to boost that mind fuckery,” Quentin said, finally abandoning his coffee mug on the table nearby. He shifted, no longer curled comfortably against the couch, but instead with his feet on the floor and his elbows digging painfully into his thighs, face in his hands. 

When Julia reached out and brushed her fingertips against his shoulder, he flinched. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Julia said. “I know this is a lot, but I can only help so much. _You_ have to do most of the work. And I know I left you, but I had to. I promise I never would have if there’d been any other way, but he’s been watching you ever since.”

“If you’re so scared of getting caught,” Quentin muttered, “then what are you doing here now?”

Gently, Julia tugged on his shoulder, trying to get him to turn and face her. When he refused, she sighed and leaned instead into his side, relaxing as best she could into him. “Because now,” she said softly, “there are people who can help you.”

Quentin didn’t know what to say to that. He’d never had _people_ before, not like she was implying. Not outside of his dreams in any case. Briefly, he thought about Eliot waiting for him outside his shop’s door, and his heart skipped a beat. But the worry and wonder were vague, still, with Julia’s power laid over him. Outside, somewhere in either Julia’s memory or in a world Quentin had lost long ago, a cab screeched to a stop amidst honking and yells. 

So it was easy enough for a moment to just be still, to remain quiet, to allow this moment to exist: Julia and Quentin curled up together, as if nothing at all was wrong. 

And then Julia sighed again and said: “All right, I’m going to state some facts for you, Q, and you’re going to _hear_ them, all right? Because while they may be scary and difficult to understand, they’re important. You’ll be able to comprehend them in time, I promise. So, can you do that for me? You willing to listen?”

Quentin groaned into his hands.

Julia snorted and pinched him gently on the thigh. “That’s the spirit. Here we go. You died doing something heroic a long time ago and, once you were dead, you chose to be reincarnated. I don’t know your reasons, but I know you _wanted_ another chance or you never would have gone through with it. Lucky you, there was a malfunction with the process so you’ve been… remembering things.”

“Wait,” Quentin said, still buried in his hands and refusing to come out but needing to know this, to understand. “You mean my…?”

“Your dreams aren’t really dreams, Q. They’re _memories_. They were real.”

His breath was shuddering against his palms suddenly, head spinning despite whatever calm Julia had forced upon him. “Then-- then that means… El. Eliot’s… uh. He’s--”

“He’s real,” Julia whispered, voice warm, happy, and so _fucking_ familiar. Quentin’s breath hitched, shoulders jerking, and he wasn’t at all surprised when Julia’s fingers finally slid across his shoulders so she could embrace him, could pull him in against her and hold him steady. 

“This wasn’t the life I would have wished for you,” she told him. “It hasn’t been easy. There are always consequences, even with things we think are gifts. Your memories--”

“They were the only thing that made me happy once you left,” Quentin gasped.

Against him, he felt Julia flinch as if struck. Then her arms tightened even more and she was rocking him gently to and fro, murmuring, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. None of this has been fair to you, it hasn’t. But you’ve gotten this far. If you can go a little farther then--”

“Then _what_, Julia?!”

“--then maybe you’ll have the chance to be happy again! _Really_ happy! Not just clinging to vague memories that ruin your fucking _life_, Q!”

Quentin was up in a heartbeat, tearing himself from Julia’s arms to pace the apartment’s floor. “The memories didn’t ruin my life,” he said, shoving his hands into his hair and tugging. “They were the one good thing, Julia! The only good thing! What ruined my _life_ was finding out that I was meaningless. That I was _nothing_. That I wasn’t good or pure enough, that I--”

“You are!”

“I’m not!”

“Oh, my _god_,” Julia said, getting up from the couch to face off against him. There was a helpless looking smile on her face. “We are _not_ doing this, Q. I’m not having a third grade argument with you. You _are_ special, that’s why Plover is afraid of you. And do you know why you’re special, Q?”

Quentin glowered at her, but... he was listening, too. 

His skin was tight, prickling all over, and his heart in his chest felt as though it had stilled, so as to better hear her answer. He _wanted_, but he had always wanted. He didn’t know if he could trust anything Julia said, goddess or not, _friend_ or not.

She said, “You’re special not because of your magic, but because of who _you_ are. You’re someone who cares enough to help, who’s willing to go above and beyond to protect people you don’t even know. You don’t save the world because you’re some _chosen one_, Q. You save it because you’re there, and because it needs doing.”

“That doesn’t… that doesn’t sound like me. Not anymore.”

Julia sighed. “You’re a hero, Q. You’ll learn it soon enough.”

He shook his head, but he didn’t have it in him anymore to pace about, to rage and yell. Maybe it was the spell Julia had cast on him, maybe it was just the exhaustion of the day, the emotional turbulence that had begun when Eliot and Margo first walked into his shop. Maybe it was a whole lifetime of misery and fruitless wishing catching up to him. 

He didn’t know. He didn’t _know_, but--

“That’d be nice,” he muttered, laughing a little. 

Though he hadn’t seen her move, Julia was suddenly in front of him, reaching up to take his hands in hers and stare up at him, gaze intense and fond and strangely heartbroken. “Reincarnation is usually easier than this,” she admitted, voice soft. “You weren’t meant to remember for a reason, but… I’m glad you do.”

“Will I ever remember all of it?”

“I don’t know,” Julia admitted, her thumbs rubbing soothing circles into Quentin’s palms. “Maybe, but… Does it really matter? You have a chance to make new memories. What was lost can yet be found, Q.”

Laughing again, just as tired and humorless as before, Quentin leaned forward and tipped his forehead gently against Julia’s. She pressed back, and for a moment everything fell away, all his thoughts and worries and the strangeness of this, of a foreign-familiar world and a goddess calling him friend, fractured memories overlaying the broken life he’d lived. 

“I missed you,” Quentin admitted.

“Aw, Q,” Julia murmured back, “I missed you, too. I wish…”

Quentin hummed, but Julia just shook her head, gently enough that she didn’t dislodge the contact between them. He felt a warm rush of power flow over his skin, and the sounds of the city stopped. The lighting changed; Quentin blinked his eyes open, only now aware that he’d closed them, to see that they were once more in his shop on Fillory.

“We’re back,” he said, pulling back so he could blink around at all the familiar, hated clocks, and-- 

Eliot’s silhouette, still frozen on the other side of the door.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Julia replied, smirking a bit.

She let go of his hands, creating space between them. Quentin felt wrong-footed at the distance, off kilter and anxious, heart beating a little too sharply, a little too quickly. He cleared his throat. “Uh. So what… If you need a hero and all, and if I’m-- I mean, what am I supposed to even do, exactly?” 

“You’ll figure it out, Q,” Julia said warmly. “You always do, especially with a little help from your friends.”

“Eliot,” Quentin breathed, once again glancing over at the door.

“Mm, and Margo and Alice and Penny and Fen and Josh and _me_, Q. You’re not alone.” She smiled at him, and her flesh began to glow very slightly, more of her god-power coming to rest within her, no longer dampened for his mortal senses. “Plover will begin to act, now that he knows I’ve made contact with you. He doesn’t know about the others though, not yet.”

“Are you sure about this?” Quentin asked. “I mean-- I’m just-- I’m _me_, you know? I don’t know what good I’ll be, just because I wanted to go on a quest when I was younger doesn’t mean that I-- That--”

“You worry too much,” Julia grinned. “Just tell me… Do you want to live, really live?”

Quentin’s breath hitched. But he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“And do you want to be happy?”

“_Yes_.”

She looked sad and happy and _hopeful_, hearing that. The goddess came near, Julia, Our Lady of the Trees, Quentin’s _friend_, though he barely remembered their friendship. But it had been strong enough, apparently, to last into godhood and beyond, to outlast centuries and human mortality. Quentin stared at her, a thousand words a tangled heap in his chest, a million questions yet unanswered.

She said, “I can’t promise you happiness. That’s the risk you take with living. Not everything goes smoothly, not everything goes well. Sometimes tragedy happens, and you’ll feel small and miserable and like giving up, giving in. But it… if you don’t give up, if you keep living, if you _try_\-- I can promise you a chance.”

“To be happy,” Quentin murmured, entranced. 

Julia smiled at him, still so sad, like her heart was breaking. “Yes. I-- I want that, Quentin. I want you to be happy. We’ve helped get you this far, but it’s your choice now. How you live from this point on is _yours_ to decide.”

“Uhm. Maybe that’s not the best--”

At that, Julia laughed, and it was no longer so familiar; was instead the sound of the wind merry through leaves, green and vibrant. She took a step forward and was suddenly close enough to touch again, to reach up with both hands and cup Quentin’s cheeks with them. When she pulled him down Quentin bent his head, allowed her to press a kiss to his forehead, and heard her murmur: “Be happy, Q. You deserve it.”

And then she was gone.

Sound came back, the world unsticking. All the clocks in his shop began to beat their mechanical hearts again, gears grinding and second hands ticking onward, keeping time. The hammering at the locked front door resumed, loud and strident, a clarion call that pulled Quentin forward, feet clumsy, heart clumsier, because that was Eliot on the other side, all of Quentin’s hopes and dreams and fervent longing. 

That was life, that was _hope_, that was a chance to be happy and more than what he’d thought he was, just waiting for Quentin to open up and let it in.

“Q,” Eliot called from the other side. “Please, babe. Let me in, I just-- I don’t mean to scare you. I know this is probably too much, so much. You don’t--” a wild laugh, hurt and happy, “--you probably don’t even know me, I must seem completely unhinged, but-- please, _please_, let me try, just let me--”

Quentin opened the door.

“Uhm,” he said.

Eliot, too close and looking awful, with dark circles under his eyes, his skin waxy-pale and sweat matting the curls at his temples, stared back at him. 

He was beautiful, Quentin thought, and so hard to look at and the only thing Quentin wanted to look at for the rest of his life, probably. His heart was pounding so fast and frantic that it actually hurt and-- and this was it, wasn’t it? This was Quentin making a choice, taking a chance. This was Quentin being brave enough to try for better, when for so many years he’d been convinced that nothing ever could be.

Whatever happened next, Quentin was glad he’d made this choice. He’d hidden within misery for too long. 

For a small eternity, Quentin and Eliot merely stared at each other. And then Eliot shook himself, and his expression changed from disbelieve to-- oh, Quentin wasn’t certain how to describe it, didn’t know if he ever would but-- Eliot _looked_ at him, and it felt like being seen for the first time, really _seen_, and cherished and known and wanted and-- 

Eliot smiled, slow and bright like a sunrise. 

Quentin smiled helplessly back.

“Hello, there,” Eliot whispered, swaying towards him. “Thanks. Thanks for uh, opening the door. And not slamming it yet, I-- I have so much to--” he cleared his throat, looking suddenly aggrieved at his own difficulty speaking, that language was a thing they had to figure out how to utilize to convey the enormity of emotion. 

Quentin _ached_. 

“I told you once,” Eliot tried again, “that if you forgot everything then I’d find you and woo you but-- what should I do? I’ll do anything, you know, I’m certainly not above bribing you into falling in love with me again. Anything you want, absolutely anything. I can teach you-- magic? Do you know magic? Or the joys of champagne? I can--”

“Stop,” said Quentin, “wait, just-- you don’t have to-- I mean, I already-- uhm!”

“What was that, Coldwater? You already _what_ now?”

Eliot quirked a brow, his eyes fucking _shining_ with delight. He leaned in even closer, and Quentin felt like the world was spinning, like anything at all was possible. Eliot was _teasing_ him. In real life, in Quentin’s waking moments. 

This was _real_. 

“What do you remember, hm?” Eliot said, voice warm and shivering low and dark, just like in so many of Quentin’s memories. “Do you remember my hands on you? My mouth? Have I already given you reason to… hm, _care_ about me, shall we say?”

“Oh, my gods,” Quentin groaned, face flaming red and, yes, his dick giving a very interested twitch. 

Eliot laughed, real and fond and somehow fucking _tender_. It was the most beautiful thing Quentin had ever heard, and he wanted to hear it again and _again_. Wanted it even more when Eliot said, “Oh, _love_. What a pair we make, hm? I hope you’ll forgive me if I suddenly lose all sense and kiss you.”

“Oh,” squeaked Quentin, startled and -- excited? Yes, excited, because--

He wanted. Oh, but he _wanted_\--

“Well, now,” drawled Eliot, leaning heavily on his cane. “If you keep reacting this prettily, I can _promise_ to lose all sense sooner than later.”

And that was it.

That was entirely too much.

Quentin finally stepped forward, out of the dim, cramped darkness of his cluttered, mundane life, and into Eliot’s arms. 

There were so many unanswered questions, so much that he didn’t understand at all, but -- Quentin had been dreaming about this man for _years_, and Quentin hadn’t lied to Julia. He really did want to be happy, and hugging Eliot seemed as good a place to start as any. So he fucking _did_, and damn his own fears and any potential consequences. He hugged Eliot, and Eliot made a startled, greedy noise in the back of his throat and curled immediately around him, those arms holding him fast, trembling but strong, and Quentin got the impression that Eliot didn’t want to let him go, not ever. 

That was probably okay.

Quentin was _sure_ that was okay.

“So uh,” said Quentin into Eliot’s shoulder. “This might be a little… forward? But yeah, apparently I knew you in a past life and, well… Hi? Again, I guess?”

“Hello, there,” Eliot murmured back. “Oh, darling. _Hello_.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE DID IT
> 
> 20k longer and like 5 months later than I anticipated, this story is finally finished. It was a _journey_, and I'm glad to be at the end of it (: I learned a lot from writing this but BOI was it stressful haha.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has ever read, kudo'd, commented, or bookmarked this thing! And a special thank you to sparrowhawke who has commented on EVERY chapter, finishing this thing would honestly have been even more difficult without your kindness. <3 
> 
> Thank you again, everyone! I really hope you enjoyed this. <3 <3


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